#412 – What if the obstacles are the point?

Running in the Miami summer in the afternoon sounds like buying a lottery ticket for a heart attack or a heat stroke. I always dismissed it as a crazy practice, and rolled my eyes at people doing it, thinking they didn't know better (my Ego and Ghost of Need to Prove did).

Until I read it's a trend: train in the most grueling conditions and then you'll be invincible in regular ones.

Yesterday, coming back from the supermarket at 3:00pm, my heavy backpack making me sweat under my shirt, it hit me: my son needs to experience the obstacles.

He needs to have skin in the game if he's going to learn to be a responsible adult, outside of the justice system.

So, the two-hour commute to and from the office he needs to report to weekly, the employers' potential rejection, the restrictive schedule, are the point.

Of course, my motherly instinct, in itself Ego-driven, pushes me to want to comfort him: pay him an Uber, rent a car and drive him, or at least find the best itinerary on the Citimapper app.

But what would that do for him? Stunt his growth.

Like when your Ego and Ghosts do what they can to limit your actions under the guise of protecting you, my desire to alleviate his discomfort was purely self-interested.

Thankfully, my son has outgrown my dated instincts. This morning, he told a friend on the phone, "I've realized that if you live wanting to avoid discomfort, your life becomes very small and you can never be happy."

He then added, "The times in my life when I've been the happiest were moments of big discomfort, when I learned to be ok with it."

If he can, I can too. I'll learn to be ok with the biggest discomfort I've ever experienced (the arrest, the jail-time, the sentencing, the house arrest).

What obstacles will you stop avoiding so that you can grow?

Love,

Carolina