Life is tough.

It is tough for many people.

And among this hardship we start looking around and become negative at those that seemingly have it easy.

We become jealous.

We become angry.

We become hateful.

We become revengeful.

You may or may not know my story:

– Life long stutterer

– Anxiety

– Depression

– Lost a whole bunch of “friends”

– My wife and I were not accepted as a couple

– I was fired from one of my Accounting jobs and was told that unless I pick up my game I will not thrive as an Accountant

– Struggled through school and Uni

– Ex’s had put me down or compared me to other guys

– Not really fitting in to any particular circles

– Low self-esteem

– Constantly thinking I am a failure because of not meeting parental expectations

And over the last week or so as I have been taking it easier with my broken hand, I have been thinking more and more about why life should be hard for me when I have stuck to the “rules”.

Here is my take on it.

Life is always going to be hard in some way or form.

Life has to be hard in certain aspects for our own good.

Even those on social media posting selfies and sitting on a beach will have something that is hard in their life.

Yep even those skinny fit girls with their YouTube videos and Instagram pictures will have some hardship in their life.

If life were easy, we wouldn’t know success and failure. We wouldn’t know happiness and sadness.

If life were easy, we would be bored.

If life were easy, we wouldn’t grow.

Life has to be hard at some point or at various intervals of our lives.

Or in other words, where there is postive, there has to be negative of some kind – to balance it out.

But there is another thing that is also very important for us to realise.

As humans, we are automatically conditioned to be negative. And the reason for being negative is rooted in our ancestral survival instincts.

Back in the old days, the caveman/woman would have had to survive on a day to day basis. The threat of mother nature, predators, diseases or other humans was constant. And so, it was a constant state of fight or flight “mode” for the caveman/woman.

If the caveman/woman were always in a positive state, they will not be able to handle anything that was going to be negative or survive.

Negatives can be great for us in many ways.

Why am I writing about this?

Because I want people to know the real deal about life. And a lot of people have asked me or told me that they think they know when it will get easier.

Life doesn’t get easier – we just rise up to the challenge.

I grew up thinking that life was going to be great and breezy. I never thought that I would have days where I would think that my life was not worth shit.

Yep, I have had moments where, very briefly, I thought that Cath and the kids would be better off without me. I thought that rather than be working at Reece Plumbing or as a personal trainer, I would be better off ending it all, rather than causing my parents a lot of grief. This can be classified as a ‘flight response’.

There are days where I just look up at the sky and literally say “Just give me strength to keep going for another day!”

But this is where the ‘fight response’ is necessary.

Take these days as a challenge. Try to take a different perspective on the challenges that you face in life in order for that particular event in your life to be successful.

You need to know your worth.

You need to know that you’re miracle.

You need to know that your capabilities far outweigh the negative blueprint in your system.

You need to be able to step forward just with one step… sometimes that’s all it takes. Just one step and that’s how you survive the present moment.

You need to live with purpose – that is to create intent within your days.

And you might even need help along the way (i.e psychologist, medication, counselling etc) – and that’s perfectly okay.

The things that I have mentioned above are things I implement into my personal training:

I try to challenge my clients and push them further. They need to know just how much their health and life is worth in order for them to take their training seriously. They need to know that their body is a miracle and can perform miraculous things through training. They need to know that their minds and bodies are capable of pushing more reps out than they believe they can. They need to train with a purpose. They need to remember that even if just pushing yourself through one more rep or one more minute of training is achieving greatness within themselves.

Training is like life. It is shit hard – especially when you are lying on that bench and are holding up 35kg+ over your head, shoulders, and chest but you manage to push it up again and again.

Life is just like that.

Each challenge is like doing 10 reps. Bust out those reps! Because when you look back, you will be amazed just how powerful and determined you are.

And if you can’t make 10 reps – take a breather, and push the remaining reps out.

You guys are amazing!

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