Do You Wish For Things To Be Easier?

So you hate the hard times you’ve passed through?  You feel you’ve experienced enough to write a book and would love to have achievement be easy and simple just once in your life.

Helen Keller said, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.”

Easy times never stretch us, never enlarge our strengths, or develop a new and expanded view of our capabilities.  Easy times are easy and that is about all you can say about them.

Difficult times, on the other hand, are the stuff that legends are made of, years later, we tell our grandchildren about these times. They’re what books and movies are based upon. Epics and inspiring tales never feature comfortable people doing comfortable, run of the mill things.

No Olympic athlete ever got the gold by insisting on her comfort; no business empires were founded by someone seeking a free ride, no great leader has ever coasted into prominence.

If you truly want to be more tomorrow than you are today, then you must learn to welcome the so-called “difficult times” and “character stretchers”, even feel a sense of excitement when you face them. After all, difficulties are a clear indicator that you’re about to enter a new and higher plane of existence.

The easiest way is always a downhill path, and as long as you wish for things to be easier you’ll continue to receive mediocre results.  Pray not for ease of passage but rather strength to scale new heights.

Seek out what will stretch you physically and spiritually because you are special and you deserve it. If you have always sought the easy way and avoided deliberately trying anything that would stretch you, then know this, that there is nothing special about you.

You don’t have to remain ordinary, however. You could begin seeking out the uphill path, the higher way.

Do not hate struggle and effort, because this is what will win you strength, grow your competence and develop your self esteem.

But most of all, it’s what builds strong character.