What part of your life’s story are you in at the moment? Are you at an age where you are looking toward a career? Are you in the middle of your vocation, or are you possibly looking at the final chapter? Has some life event shaped you recently? Something incredibly good or horrifically awful?
Most stories that we know through books, movies or plays have some elements that are consistent with our lives. There's something good at the beginning with promise and light and then a darkness enters and the characters must learn to navigate through the difficulty. So many people in our world will go to great lengths to sidestep these challenges, these pains.
And yet, challenges are what create a greatness in us if we would only learn to interpret them properly. How much of our energy do we spend avoiding the natural and educational pain in our lives? Learning to be ok with difficulty is one of life’s greatest lessons. In fact, the great minds seem to invite it.
If we are unwilling to go through pain, our stories will miss a great context. Change of any kind – even positive healthy change -- is painful. If we avoid this reality then the single greatest path in front of us is stagnation. This is precisely why courage is one of the main components of authentic growth.