The Beauty in Telling Stories of Struggle

People don’t want to hear struggle stories. They see success stories, think it as some kind of overnight achievement and then beat themselves up for it if they haven’t achieved anything exemplar.

No snap judgement here, I have experienced it myself. Before I worked two years to reach the current successful status in freelancing, success stories baffled me too!

Seeing 4 minutes motivational video of a person and then judging your self-worth based on that, it is so impractical. Everyone’s goal is different; the learning path is different; priorities are different, and the deciding factor: everyone’s intellectual capacity is different.

The online learning platforms are gaining traction.

I am striking no dart to the traditional education system; they have their pros and cons. Discussing them will only start a wave of negative judgements from the people who have been following the conventional method, which they think will be a legacy forever. Let’s leave at that.

A few years back, online learning seemed exciting because of the way they present information which is easy to absorb in the form of videos, interactive quizzes, gradable assignments, etc.

Most of them are available in the traditional education system too. But the evaluation procedure, transparency, feedback and personalised support is practised differently in both the systems.

It is difficult to compare the two educational systems in such a short read. So, I am not going to do that anyway because I am not a career counsellor.

Resistance when starting an unconventional path

Back in 2017, when I enrolled in my first course at Udacity, I faced so many adverse reactions from people. I’ll give you a number. 100% of the community was against me.

The negativity was so hard; I even hesitated to discuss with my family and close friends!

All questions were about spending money on an online course:

• How dumb you have to be to spend INR 40k for a non-proven method of job-success?
• Show me that money, and I’ll teach you how to use it in a better way.
• There are a lot of free sources on the internet where you can learn better than this.

These questions invite suspicion, and they just said my method wouldn’t be worth it.

If they wanted to give suggestions, they would have provided me with a solution. But no, since they haven’t done something new, the first nature is to stop someone who tries to carve a path never seen before.

If you are not following the conventional route, you will face a lot of resistance which will test your self-confidence.

Good things take time.

At present, I have few people asking me about how I manage so much time apart from work for activities like workouts, blogging, strict morning schedule, healthy eating, etc.

When it comes to career, they are fascinated by how I have reached this level where I work for a maximum of 3 hours per day and have a stable, controlled income.

Here comes the lazy part when they want to achieve this success within a month or two: I start to tell the story of how I made it, and it goes long.

How do you even think of explaining two years of struggle in a few minutes? People lose patience, and they stop you right in the conversation!

Here is a practical answer that shuts them down every time and I don’t stammer while saying this, “2 months? Let me tell you. It’s never going to happen! Luck is another aspect, but hard work is the only thing that will make you luckier with time.”

If a person has become successful in 2 years and you ask how to achieve the same status in 2 months, you are disrespecting someones hard work, and it hurts!

Why should you share the struggle?

There are a lot of milestones in your journey of success. As we keep documenting them by journaling or retaining all the changes we adopt as a person, they will always motivate us whenever we hit an impasse or are confused about what to do next.

If you are not grateful about all the accomplishments you have earned so far, negativity will suck all the energy and make you feel like a loser. Positivity accumulates with time, and if you want to trust it, you have to be content with it!

There is one discomfort in taking a new step which will push you in the growth zone. The other one, the one which is more painful in the long-term, is not taking that step, and then self-loathing at the same decision after months or years of self-pity. Please don’t do this to yourself, life is better when action is your best friend!

We, humans, have a limit, and we can break them if we focus on the positives instead. Negativity is a defence mechanism that keeps you in the comfort zone, and we have developed this nature because of the evolutionary survival instinct.

Killing the survival instinct is like challenging your brain to do something that isn’t natural or accepted by the stereotypes or even the entire community you grew up with. Yes, the impedance comes from all sides!

If you want to be the change, you wish to see in the world, or better if you’re going to take full responsibility for everything that matters to you, you have to trick your brain into taking that risky step.

You will ride the storm, enjoy the splashes and be grateful that they happened! It can transform the learning course from being annoying to an addictive experience which you will radiate everywhere you go.

This blog belongs to a series of posts I am publishing in this 100-days streak. Navigate to the end of article 22, for the references from day 23 onwards. If you would like to read the ones before day 22, here is the first one that documents them in the end.

~ Sanjeev