This is not a call for willpower or “grit.” This is not another admonishment of “no pain, no gain.” Personally, I wanted the reward and not the struggle. I wanted the result and not the process. I was in love not with the fight but only the victory but sadly, I realized life doesn’t work that way. Everybody wants what feels good. Everyone wants to live a carefree, happy and easy life, to look perfect, make more money, become popular, well-respected, mostly admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when you walk into the room. Everyone including I would love that — it’s easy to wish for such but If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say something like, “I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,” it’s so ubiquitous that it doesn’t even mean anything. A question perhaps you’ve never considered before, is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.
Everybody wants to have an amazing job and financial independence — but not everyone wants to suffer through 60-hour work weeks, long commutes, obnoxious paperwork, navigate arbitrary corporate hierarchies and the blasé confines of an infinite cubicle. People want to be rich without the risk , without the sacrifice, without the delayed gratification necessary to accumulate wealth. Everybody wants to have an awesome relationship — but not everyone is willing to go through the tough conversations, the awkward silences, the hurt feelings and the emotional psychodrama to get there. And so they settle. They settle and wonder “What if?” for years and years and until the question morphs from “What if?” into “Was that it?” Happiness requires struggle. Even the biblical Jacob struggled with the angel for his blessing. The positive is the side effect of handling the negative. You can only avoid negative experiences for some time, not so long before they come roaring back to life.
At the core of all human behavior, our needs are more or less similar. Positive experience is easy to handle. It’s negative experience that we all, by definition, struggle with. Therefore, what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire but by what bad feelings we’re willing and able to sustain to get us to those good feelings. People want an amazing physique. But you can’t end up with one unless you legitimately appreciate the pain and physical stress that comes with living inside a gym for hour upon hour, unless you love calculating and calibrating the food you eat , planning your life out in tiny plate-sized portions which can be terribly annoying.
People want to start their own business or become financially independent. But you don't end up a successful entrepreneur unless you find a way to appreciate the risk, the uncertainty, the repeated failures, and working insane hours on something you have no idea whether it will be successful or not. Let me share my experience....The first time I fried buns snacks to sell to students in my place of primary assignment, I fried 80 pieces of buns snack and happily took them to school to sell to the students during break only to discover the woman who was selling buns last term resumed her business the same day I started mine. It was sheer coincidence that got me jittery. That very day, I didn't sell a single buns. I got home, sat down, calculating the next step to take. I was greatly discouraged but I told myself....I WON'T QUIT.
The next day, I went to town and supplied the 80 pieces to different provision stores. I told them not to pay....let them sell first and pay me later. I knew my buns have a very sweet unique taste and will survive the competition from other producers, so I didn't flinch. In the evening, I went to town to collect my money. They told me to supply again and again which I did till my business stabilized. I discovered I spend #100 daily supplying to provision stores in town, I decided to stop my supply in town and started selling my buns snacks in the staffroom. The patronage from staff members was beyond my imagination as I sell every piece of snack I take to school without remaining any. The money gotten from the business went a very long way to take care of my financial needs. I wake every 2.am and go to school by 7.00 am. I kept doing my business till my current job came along. I decided to stop frying buns because I wasn't having time anymore. If not, would have still continued. Imagine if I had lost hope the first day I didn't sell any, what would have become of the business? Maybe it wouldn't have paved way for a better job.
People want a partner, a spouse. But you don’t end up attracting someone amazing without appreciating the emotional turbulence that comes with weathering rejections, building the sexual tension that never gets released, and staring blankly at a phone that never rings. It’s part of the game of love. You can’t win if you don’t play. What determines your success isn’t “What do you want to enjoy?” The question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?” The quality of your life is not determined by the quality of your positive experiences but the quality of your negative experiences. And to get good at dealing with
negative experiences is to get good at dealing with life.
There’s a lot of funny advice out there that says, “You’ve just got to want it enough!”
Everybody wants something. And everybody wants something enough . They just aren’t aware of what it is they want, or rather, what they want “enough.” Because if you want the benefits of something in life, you have to also want the cost . If you want the beach perfect body, you have to want the sweat, the soreness, the early mornings, and the hunger pangs. If you want the yacht, you have to also want the late nights, the risky business moves, and the possibility of pissing off a person or thousands of persons. If you find yourself wanting something month after month, year after year, yet nothing happens and you never come any closer to it, then maybe what you actually want is a fantasy , an idealization, an image and a false promise. Maybe what you want isn’t what you want, you just enjoy wanting. Maybe you don’t actually want it at all. I once asked a friend many years ago, “How do you choose to suffer?” He tilted his head and looked at me like my face is full of six noses. But I asked because that tells me far more about you than your desires and fantasies. Because you have to choose something.
I once got a letter of appointment for a job in a Leotetra Pharmaceuticals as a Pharmaceutical Sales Representative. Although I didn't take up the job offer because the company posted me to Enugu meanwhile that's not my geographical location...but in the course of the oral interview, I was asked....."Miss Esther, what does success mean to you?" The answer that sincerely came to my mind was...."Success to me is meeting up with deadlines and doing all I can to beat the company's target record". Sir, please what incentives and preferences does the company have for someone that beats her target? I asked... the Man looked at me in awe and gave me detailed answer and told me....Congratulations, I think you have all it takes to do this Job.
Getting a good job is never a problem, working hard to keep it is. Being carried away with the euphoria of a job forgetting the task ahead of you is an idealistic mentality. Facing the reality and being pragmatic is the best as it keeps you in check.You can’t have a pain-free life. It can’t all be roses and unicorns. And ultimately that’s the hard question that matters. Pleasure is an easy question. And pretty much all of us have similar
answers. The more interesting question is the pain. What is the pain that you want to sustain? That answer will actually get you somewhere. It’s the question that can change your life. It’s what makes me me and you you. It’s what defines us and separates us and ultimately brings us together.
For most of my adolescence and young adulthood, I fantasized about being an International Public speaker. I lay hold on any book that cross my path, I
would always close my eyes and envision myself up on stage talking to the tranquility of sober minded young crowd. This fantasy could keep me occupied for hours on end. The fantasizing continued up through the higher institution. But even then it was never a question of if I’d ever be up speaking in front of screaming crowds, but
when. I was biding my time before I could invest the proper amount of time and effort into getting out there and making it work. First, I needed to finish school. Then, I needed to make money, publish books Then, I needed to find the time. Then… and then nothing.
Despite fantasizing about this for over half of my life, the reality never came till I stepped out and began giving written presentation in my Fellowship... GRACE CAMPUS FELLOWSHIP, UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA. I began going to secondary schools to give moral instructions. I began to spend countless hours writing books and novels... The dictionary became my greatest company. The daily drudgery of practicing, the logistics of finding schools to talk to their students, rehearsing, the pain of finding topics to devote time and read on...It’s been a mountain of a dream and a mile- high climb to the top. And what it took me a long time to discover was that I really love to climb much higher than I have already.
Initially, what I wanted was the reward, not the struggle, if not, I would have started working seriously on my dream at quite a younger age probably at age 9 or 10. I wanted the result, without knowing its too long a process. Now, I talk to young people in seminars and workshops, I talk to facilitators, I talk to my blog readers just as am doing right now. I may not have gone international but I'll soon get there.
Conclusively, who you are is defined by the values you are willing to struggle for. People who enjoy the struggles of a gym are the ones who get in good shape. People who enjoy long workweeks and the politics of the corporate ladder are the ones who move up it.
People who enjoy the stresses and uncertainty of the starving artist lifestyle are ultimately the ones who live it and make it.
"Reflect on the pain you want to sustain, so as to reach the peak you want to attain"- Esther Ogbuka.
IJEOMA ESTHER OGBUKA.
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