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Why Adversity Comes With Success
Accepting the costs of self-improvement
When I was a kid, I had big dreams. I watched all kinds of hero movies and aspired to be like them: courageous, strong, resilient. Like many children, I wanted to be a police officer at times, or perhaps a firefighter — real-world heroes. What I learned as I matured was just how difficult being a hero — being virtuous — really was. It’s easy to watch an athlete climb a mountain from your couch and feel motivated to do something similar, but it’s a whole other thing to actually climb the mountain yourself.
One of the biggest misunderstandings I had was just how much adversity comes along with that. Not only is climbing a mountain, for example, physically and mentally draining due to the challenge of the task itself but there will also be plenty of people who will tell you that you cannot do it and that you’re foolish to even try. These voices will never go away, so what do we practically do about them?
The Road of Self-Improvement
It’s worth discussing the road of self-improvement — and it is, indeed, a road. When you set out for excellence in whatever it is you do the goal is rather simple: to get better at that very thing. As an example, if you have a goal to squat 100 lbs you can only achieve that by getting better, in this case, stronger than you…
