Maybe it’s you

Struggling today?

It’s okay. It happens to all of us.

When we struggle, we might naturally look for external causes: others are being difficult with us, we are spectacularly unlucky today, or the weather is just so depressing.

But the outside world is not so different from day to day. Everything always changes, but from one day to the next the changes are usually small.

So if you are struggling today, maybe the cause of your struggling is inside you.

The first time I acknowledged this possibility was a light bulb moment for me. If I’m struggling because of me and not because of external factors, then maybe I can stop the struggle!

Here’s an example: If you’re having trouble with a decision, what if it’s not that the decision is intrinsically hard, but rather that you are unusually bad at making decisions today?

Seen this way, struggles and difficulties are like storms passing through the sky that is your consciousness. When you bike somewhere in a storm, you might get very wet and you might have to pedal very hard. But after the storm has passed, that same bike ride is suddenly much easier.

Storms can be intense for a while, but they will pass. What if there’s just a storm passing through your head today?

By the way, when I say that maybe it’s you, I don’t mean that you are at fault.

Sometimes you can avoid the cause of your struggle next time, like when you’re having a bad day because you only got a few hours of sleep after watching too much TV. Other times, there is no obvious cause, or the cause is obvious but you couldn’t have done anything about it.

Either way, when you acknowledge that your struggle is inside you, you might feel immense relief. Because things will be easier tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or some day after that.

Yours,

— Peter