To Act When It Is Most Difficult Is The Defining Moment Of Your Character

There are days where you want to simply lay there and scroll through your phone all day.

There are days where you want to give in to your fears, to allow the creeping self-doubt to arrest your creativity.

There are days where you have no energy, motivation, or willpower to help you move toward your goals.

I believe these are the days where it is crucial to push forward. These are the days where your character is tested, where you are confronted with the question:

Do you want what you say you want?

I know what the counter-argument is: burn out. We’re all scared of experiencing burn out so we tell ourselves that we must be patient and pace ourselves.

And I acknowledge that this danger is likely and entirely possible. We should do our best to avoid experiencing burn out and overexerting ourselves.

But I also realized that the thought of avoiding burnout was an excuse I’ve been using for many endeavors I’ve pursued in my life. Whenever things got hard and I found it difficult to press on, I excused myself by saying I should go easy on myself, to make sure I didn’t push myself too hard.

I realized that I had never really experienced burn out. I never really knew how far I could push myself because I always had a safety rope on. I never allowed myself to see where the line should be drawn in the sand.

Understanding your limit is important because it teaches you how much you can push yourself and when you need to rest and recalibrate. You also gain confidence because you usually find that you can push yourself far more than you thought you could. You find out how much potential you actually have, how capable you are of future accomplishments.

If you always restrain yourself in the guise of “avoiding burnout”, how will you ever know how far you can push yourself? How will you ever find out the truth if you aren’t willing to search for it?

How much discomfort and pain can you withstand? How tough are you against the tragedies and misfortunes of life? How much suffering can you withstand before you break?

This isn’t a call to be a masochist. This isn’t me talking about reveling or enjoying the pain. It’s about preparing yourself for the archetypal flood — the catastrophes of nature and culture that always threaten individuals and their ways of life.

We will face many tragedies throughout our lives. We will experience the sickness and death of our loved ones, failures, rejections, disasters, betrayals. We will have to face our mortality in the face and come to terms with it.

Would you like to be the dam that stops the chaotic waters from taking everything we love in our lives with them? Or will you be swept along by the indifferent and powerful waves, grasping for a platform to keep your head above water, crying out for help in the darkness?

Would you like to be the hero that everyone leans on in times of crisis? Or will you fall victim to circumstance and be taken where the wind blows?

Heroes are made when they act in the face of temptation. They are always tempted by the eternal adversary, the dark part of them that tries to persuade them to abandon responsibility and take the easy way out.

Heroes are considered heroic because they find the courage to act even when they’re tired, even when they don’t feel like it, even when they fear moving forward.

They are not heroes because of their words, because of what they say they’re going to do in times of crisis, but by their actions. They are elevated and exalted because they did what others could not do. They acted in the moments where it was hardest to act.

The spirit of the hero lives within us all, but it is a spirit that is awakened only through embodiment.

Act like a hero in your daily life, and so you shall become. Display courage by doing what you know you need to do when it is most difficult.

Your character is tested in your weakest moments. Will you act according to your principles even when no one is watching? Do you believe in what you say you believe all the time, or only when it is convenient?

How are you sure that you will do what is necessary when times are tough if you can’t bring yourself to do what is necessary now? How can you be sure that you will not capitulate and crumble when life does not go as expected?

How will you know how much suffering you could endure if you’ve never tested yourself?

Do you want to find out on your own terms, or will you wait until uncontrollable events in life force you to confront the truth of your weakness?