A lot of content out there in the self-help, self-improvement space is oriented around making your life better. And there's a reason for this - we all want our lives to be better.

But there's a misconception that I don't see as many people talking about, which is: if you are “successful” at self-improvement, if you have made strides on your own growth journey (whatever that looks like for you), it doesn't mean that bad or frustrating things don't happen in your life. 

Rather, growth helps you see the value in the harder parts of life, gives you more tools to manage them and helps you bounce back from them more quickly and effectively.

That first part was a bit of a mind f*** for me when I first wrapped my head around it. Wait a second, I understand that the bad stuff can be the means to the ends of god stuff but actually want me to VALUE the bad stuff?  Yup, that's actually, in a way, what's going on here.  

There is enormous value in us continuing to face moments of difficulty, over and over again in our lives.

Having to deal with rude messages from a man on a dating app or disappointment about ghosting aren't just important because they're necessary steps toward what we're looking or (“you have to kiss a lot of frogs until you find your prince”). They're valuable because it gives us a current, accurate-to-today look at where our current limiting beliefs or insecurities are. We can journal and reflect intellectually all we want, but nothing brings the truth of our emotional or subconscious mind to the surface like something that sucks. Our reaction to and feelings about anything hard in life are tracking beacons to what is still holding us back.  

This is most powerful when you feel stuck. If you feel like you're trying to change a habit or even for my clients who are trying to shift their beliefs about themselves, dating or some thought they've been struggling with, it's not uncommon for someone to notice that they're not making progress fast enough or they're still slipping into past behaviors and feel like that's a bad thing.

Yes, they haven't broken through, but every time they have difficult or “negative” experience is another opportunity of fresh emotions to interrogate what's really going on underneath the surface.

As a coach, I see these moments as so useful because everything is much clearer than in the day-to-day when you're just intellectually thinking about it. (This is even true in the meta sense when my clients aren't making as much progress in coaching as they like, this can be a hint to their beliefs about self-trust, commitment and so on!)

You can use this with tasks you're procrastinating, with a habit that seems to be particularly difficult to kick or with situations that seem to keep coming up. 

Try asking yourself questions like:

• What do I not have to face by avoiding this change? What does staying the allow me to avoid?

• What do I think is going to happen when I complete this task/shift this habit/change this behavior? What are the consequences of that change that I might not feel prepared for?

• What did my reaction to this hardship show me I'm still sensitive about? Do I feel like the fact that this happened might signal something about me?

Ten times out of ten, when I do this type of reflection, I can spot something that I'm avoiding or resisting that is tied up in the “hard” thing that has time and time again unlocked new levels of self-knowledge, agency and growth.