Have you ever heard the quote, “How you do anything is how you do everything?”
I love that quote. It brings me back to a revelatory moment on my yoga mat when I noticed how much I struggled to do the posture correctly, in a make myself wrong kind of way.
I wasn’t so much noticing the struggle that stood out to me. I am a ‘boot-straps-kinda’-girl,’ so fighting for what I want is just part of my home-grown, born-in-America mindset.
Struggle. Hard work. Do or die. Make it happen.
All just normal posture for me … Until that moment on my yoga mat.
What I noticed was that struggle was my default mode of operandi and behind the struggle was an undeniable self wrong-making … and this didn’t resonate with me, so I co-opted ‘struggle’ as my teacher. In that moment I consciously decided to use struggle as the vehicle to teach me about letting go of making myself wrong.
If “how we do anything is how we do everything,” I viscerally knew I wanted to do everything in my life with an equal measure of grace and ease with my highly self-regarded in-action way of being. Moreover, it made sense to use struggle to my advantage, than ‘it use me!’
I’ve learned that struggle teaches us what we want, by showing us what we don’t want. I’ve learned that rather than struggle, I could look for what the moment wanted to teach me. 
But just because I’ve taken on struggle as my teacher does not mean that it doesn’t continue to rise.
Like today. Recently I started running in the morning, though I assure you, I was likely one of the last people I’d ever expect to become a runner. Today when I went out for my morning run, I noticed struggle rise up. When I saw it, I immediately tapped into some of the lessons my old teaching friend has taught me.
Here are three reflections on the ways you too can co-opt struggle as your teacher, so you too can exploit this unlikely teacher as your most powerful advocate for your success!
Commit
Commitment is your transformational vehicle. Commitment is the thing that says your actions match your word. Commitment is the thing that exemplifies your promise to your result. Commitment is you noticing the ‘struggle’ that you don’t want to do it, and you do it anyway!
As Michael Jordan’s coach, Tim S. Grover wrote in his book Relentless, “Bottom line, if you want success of any kind: you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Every time you think you can’t, you have to do it anyway.”
If you say you are going to do something, do it. For example, you say you are going to run every single day, but when you wake up you feel tired, but with no real promise to the result you want, you roll over and go back to sleep. Before you know it, you’ve got to leave for work and you haven’t even showered yet. Run? No time.
Conversely, with dyed-in-the-wool, non-negotiable commitment, you not only run everyday as you said you would, you reap all the benefits honoring your word to yourself offers, like time-mastery, like freedom from living a life of excuses, like garnering a worthy place in the road race you entered!
Commitment is waking up feeling energized, because you went to bed knowing you were running in the morning. No. Matter. What.
Let Go!
Letting go is mindfulness in action. Letting go is noticing thoughts of struggle rise and not believing them! Yes, exactly, not believing them! If you believe every thought you think, good grief, you can systematically seal the deal of ever achieving your dreams!
Think about a time that you really wanted to do something, and thoughts of “I can’t rose up.”
Did you listen to the thoughts, or did you let them go and ‘do it’ anyway? I noticed all these amazing, teaching-struggle-thoughts rise up when I went out for my run, and because this is a whole new fitness game for me, the struggle thoughts were awesomely instructive!
So come with me for a moment – I’m running at a slow but steady pace, but my heart rate is rising rapidly, and I start to pant! Ha! Yes. Pant like hyperventilate, and as I notice my strained breathing, I also notice my struggle around my breaths and I stopped. No. I didn’t stop running.
I stopped the thoughts of struggle around my breathing and focused on my breath. I stopped the thoughts: “I hate to run … I can’t run … My cardio strength is too weak to run … My head hurts … I’m too tired … and just breathed.
I let go of the struggle around my breath and an ease rose up and the hyperventilating stopped. Crazy? No. Just like moving into a yoga posture on the mat with ease, just like asking the boss for a raise matter-of-factly because it’s time, just like saying no to a date you don’t want to go on because you’d rather do something that serves you better, just like asking for help when you need it because you know you don’t know how to do ‘it,’ I let go of the stories of “I can’t,” and moved into my run with greater ease.
Letting go of struggle-thoughts and just being with ‘what is’ is a very useful tool in all areas of life.
Stay Strong
I suspect you’ve heard this recommendation in quotes and sayings many times over. One of my favorites is a Japanese Proverb, “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” And if you have a negative mindset, these sorts of sayings prove very effective to direct your thoughts. However, here I mean to literally create strength in your body as your vehicle to let go of struggle.
When I was running, and my breathing grew shallow with my increased heart rate, I noticed how I lost connection to my upper body. My posture felt sloppy and I noticed the struggle in my form as well as my breath. So I created an ease in my body by connecting to my core and creating proper form. I held my chest and head up, held my arms in proper form at a 90° angle, and placed my feet on the ground with a mindfulness-practioner’s focused intentionality.
I grabbed back strong physical form and … I felt my confidence skyrocket, which fueled a surging passion to run faster!
My new morning run simply validates these lessons I learned earlier in life, but with new and fresh nuances. And funny, though I had zero interest in running, I am on-fire for the ways life came to teach me these lessons yet again!
By letting go of the thoughts of struggle with my breath and the thoughts that running is hard, I shifted my whole mindset … and completed my first two mile run! Now those are results worth achieving.
So, the next time you’re faced with struggle at work, at home, or while running, remember to commit to yourself, let go of the thoughts around that struggle, and stay strong.
Because how you do anything is how you will do everything.
