I Can Do Hard Things

I Can Do Hard Thing
by Yvette Trujillo, RScP

I remember reading “The Road Less Traveled” by Scott Peck when I was a teenager. It was brutal. The opening line of this book is “Life is difficult” and to my optimistic teenage mind, this was serious cognitive dissonance! I didn’t want to hear that life was going to be hard. I wanted to believe that I could simply step into a bright new future. I learned a lot about myself as I read that book and it wasn’t good news. I wasn’t mature enough to fully understand the message and I hadn’t developed any self-compassion yet. Instead of helping me grow, it became evidence that I was a bad person and it was fuel for the flame of my self-destructive behavior for many years.

Out of that and many other formative experiences, I became a change junkie. I wanted… no, I needed out. I needed out of whatever experience I was having that had turned unpleasant or that I has simply changed my mind about. Life always seemed to become unbearable. The grass was always greener on every other side than the one I happened to be standing on. Something else I heard early on was “wherever you go, there you are.” I proved this to myself over and over again.

Life was indeed a very rough road for many years, but over time I learned more about my fundamental nature, the shadow self, and my inherent goodness and wholeness. This understanding of my divine nature eventually caught up to the book smarts I’d gained from “The Road Less Traveled” and many other wonderful resources I’d taken in over the years and as a result, the road doesn’t jostle me quite as much anymore.

I agree with Scott Peck that life is hard, but I’ve also learned that I can do hard things! (Thank you, Glennon Doyle) Actually, one of the gifts of this life is the hard things we grow through. A key differences for me now is that I don’t always see difficulty as evidence of my badness or a consequence for my bad behavior. but more often I see life’s challenges as a way for me to level up and learn. I see the hard things as a way to better understand myself and my life. Along this road less traveled I have also become optimistic in a new way, not thinking naively that life will and should always send me rainbows and butterflies, but that I can enjoy the wind storm too. In the midst of the challenge I can (eventually) witness my own growth and know that my roots are deepening and celebrate that I am having a growth spurt. Nowadays I realize that green grass isn’t the only ideal. Sometimes my zero-scaped reality is perfect for right now, and I can stay put and allow the what-is of the moment to grow me. Even more, I can see that that Spirit is actually loving me through the hard thing. Today I thank God that my life has been difficult because it has gotten me here and I love the me that has emerged on my road less traveled.

And so it is.