What Stuggle Looks Like

We are all impacted by struggle in our lives. Sometimes struggle surfaces when it is time for us to grow. Sometimes we invite struggle into our lives through our choices and sometimes we encounter struggle with others when we have disagreements or when our values are not in alignment. 

Struggle in life and business sometimes looks like red lights at every intersection when you are trying to get somewhere in a hurry, missed opportunities, income goals unmet, or racing from one place to the next with hardly enough time to think or breath.

I remember when I first moved abroad, we moved for my husband’s job. I felt sad and experienced a sense of loss at leaving the life I knew behind, even as I was being called to show up in a different way. I did not know how to navigate this new change. People whom I trusted told me to just to focus on my husband and the children while implying that I need not continue to focus on my own career as my family would need me to be present to help them with their transition.

I agreed to the journey, and questioned how I was to going live a life that was full of more of what I loved. I also struggled with the idea that I needed to focus on everyone else in my family and forget about my own aspirations.

In this struggle, I got in my own way and held myself back in moments when I did not need to. 

Yet through it all, I learned how to trust myself and try and try again, even when things seemed hard. Within two months time after the move, I began meeting people who were from the country I was living in and we began to connect more. I ended up making friends, learning a new language and building a foundation for a new business that I was eager to launch. I was able to to do all of this in my new place and I learned, again, what it meant to move beyond my internal struggles to developing relationships and creating opportunities.

What is a struggle you’ve had and how did you move beyond it?