Recently I had a first on a retreat, a guest decided to leave early. When I was approached and told what was happening I felt the same emotions of getting fired back in 2014 begin to surface. Rejection, inadequacy, failure. I wanted to get defensive, frustrated and even mad. 

In real time, I witnessed myself process and move through these emotions and immediately into kindness and empathy. The fruits of training my mind not to be a slave to my thoughts or my body, everything I try to teach to people on retreats and what I was trying to share with this person. I do my absolute best with every retreat, class and workshop I run. I truly want to help people, and, I’m not always as successful as I want to be. Despite protests from my family I LOVE to share the story of getting fired from my corporate job, it’s the first thing I do on every retreat. 

Why? 

Because that moment of rejection and the feelings of failure, inadequacy and uncertainty that followed became some of my greatest teachers. That moment in time liberated me from a certain trajectory and put me on a path to something greater. I just had to accept it despite all of the uncomfortability. I also tell people what a blessing it was because I am not sure I would have had the fortitude to pull myself out on my own.

I could tell in this moment, this person was feeling some of the same uncomfortability I had felt. Parts of us have to die so others can be born. This is NOT a fun experience. What we see in public with regards to success is only so because of hours and hours of failure in private and that timing looks so different for everyone. There’s no great story of triumph that goes, it was easy in the beginning, then easy in the middle and then it was easy at the end. They don’t write books or make movies about stories like that. The first time Tony Robbins ran a speaking seminar he spent his entire savings and no one showed up. Michael Jordan got cut from his high school basketball team. Vera Wang’s first wedding dress design came at age 40. Oprah was told she wasn’t fit for TV. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years incarcerated before becoming president of South Africa. I remember watching an inspired talk Steve Harvey gave about his struggles as an up and coming comedian. He talked about how doors were repeatedly closed in his face like happens to us all. He said the mistake that we make is we stand there and continue to knock when a much better door is open just down the hall. 

All stories of great triumph are born from great struggle.

There was no anger or animosity in this conversation, I recognized that this person simply couldn’t deal with what was happening internally for them. While I felt SO strongly that this retreat would have been so helpful, they simply weren’t ready for it and it had nothing to do with me. SO much of what we take personally in the actions of others has literally nothing to do with us. 

I’ve failed with myself what feels like a million times in meditation, my business and my relationships. I’ve also had amazing moments of peace, joy, clarity, connection and accomplishment. I’ve come to learn one of the great lessons of the yogis and mystics, the only permanence we have in this human experience is impermanence. Part of what I love about meditation and mindfulness is it invites us to fall in love with the present moment, no matter what is unfolding. In my mind, it is truly the ultimate superpower and the most liberating gift we can give and receive.

I would argue one of our greatest challenges right now is a crisis of comfort disguised as lack. So many of us strive to never be too hot or too cold, too bored, too hungry or too challenged. We know the answer to any questions at the click of a button. We can hear any song, watch any movie, read any book, eat any cuisine, at any moment. I recently sat down to dinner with friends and noticed a family spend the entire meal on their phones and tablets. Eek. 

The challenges of our ancestors don’t exist. We have no great war, no great financial depression, our great struggle is with ourselves, our purpose, our distractions and finding the present moment. The blessing and curse of our human brain is it can move forward and backward, it can learn from mistakes, and, it can also dwell on what’s been and what may never be. Couple this with a never ending stream of conditioning about how what you need to fix all of your problems is outside of you, and we are left constantly searching for answers that already exist inside of us and confusion on how to get there. 

"The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.” - Stephen McCranie 

Hall of fame baseball players failed 70% of the time they stepped up to the plate. Why are we SO afraid of failure? Why do we shy away from difficult conversations and situations? It’s in large part an addiction to comfort. My favorite thing about getting into freezing cold water every morning is that even after doing it over a thousand times I never WANT to do it. After the sweet comfort of sleep, the last thing my body wants to do is be freezing cold. Sure, there are a TON of health benefits – increased dopamine levels, reduced inflammation, improved immune response and more, but the best part is, the mental journey from excuses to execution. Proving to myself I can do hard things. 

The funny thing is, our beautiful brains do everything they can to keep us safe from struggle and that is SO important. 3,000 years ago when we were running away from predators, this was an incredibly valuable tool for the sustenance of our species. In the present day, it’s moving us further and further away from the struggles which allow us to achieve greatness. We are both blessed and cursed to be able to choose struggle on our own terms. Just our awareness that we’re shying away from struggle can be so debilitating and make us feel like not enough. 

“Joy is just a point between two points of pain and pain is just a point between two points of joy.” - Trevor Hall

I remember watching an inspired talk Steve Harvey gave about his struggles as an up and coming comedian. He talked about how doors were repeatedly closed in his face like happens to us all. He said the mistake that we make is we stand there and continue to knock when a much better door is open just down the hall. One of my favorite books called “the surrender experiment” by Michael Singers tells an incredible story about how through radical acceptance in the face of struggle, everything that’s meant for us will find its way to us. Want to know how? Next week I’m going to dive into the how, giving some insights into the law of attraction and quantum physics. You won’t want to miss it!