Welcome to Under 2, an email series delivering short insights to empower your money life – in 2 minutes or less.
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We often imagine real progress as a smooth, inspiring climb upward, a steady path to our goals. But the truth?
You already know it: life rarely, if ever, works that way.
There are times when everything feels heavy, when you’re juggling too much, or when it seems like you’re moving backward.
And that’s OK.
Struggle is normal. Hard is the human condition.
Do you remember the scene in Eat, Pray, Love where Julia Roberts’ character (representing Elizabeth Gilbert in her memoir of the same title) is struggling with whether to let herself fall in love with the man she met in Bali? Talking to her guru Ketut, she’s stuck on keeping herself in balance, something she’s abandoned her home and traveled the world to find. He says to her, “Liz, listen to Ketut, sometimes to lose balance for love is part of living [a] balanced life.”
The same is true in our own lives: being out of balance is part of balance, across the bigger picture.
Sometimes we push hard. Sometimes we rest.
Both are necessary and important.
You can’t have one without the other, like two sides of the same coin. Different types of growth happen in both conditions, when we’re stretched to our limits and when we let ourselves recover.
Think of a challenging time you came through before. First, acknowledge that you walked through it, messy as it was. You have done, and can do, hard things.
Then, reflect on what those times taught you. How did it shape who you are now? Would you give that new person up?
Progress in your finances, career, or personal growth rarely feels linear. It’s messy. You might make two steps forward only to take one step back. But that’s still progress because you’re engaged in the trying.
Struggle is simply inevitable when you’re working toward something worthwhile. It’s how you grow.
The key is to lean into struggles that align with your bigger goals, ones that stretch and grow you toward the life you want, the purpose you live to carry out.
Even in everyday things like managing time or money, struggle is often necessary for joy. Laura Vanderkam calls it “effortful fun.”
Planning a trip to Disney? Ugh.
But watching your kid squeal with delight during a once-in-a-lifetime visit with Elsa? Worth it.
The reality is that without the pain to create it, such pleasures in life wouldn’t happen.
So if you’re in a season where things feel hard, where the weight of your goals feels too heavy or the path to your dreams feels too long or rough, you can give yourself permission to feel and acknowledge that, but don’t let it stop you.
Hard isn’t wrong, it’s perfectly normal.
Take the next step anyway, even if it’s small or imperfect. Every hard moment is part of the broader story you’re living.
Don’t despair. Don’t give up. Keep the faith. Because one day, you will look back from the other side of this struggle… and be glad you did.
Ryan Holiday in Discipline is Destiny
It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed…the habits of a vigorous mind are formed contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.
Abigail Adams
I have worked hard all my life, and have never been particularly lucky, but this summer I was lucky, and I am enjoying it to the full. I know perfectly well that the luck will not continue, and it is not necessary that it shall.
Theodore Roosevelt
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Under 2, an email series designed to share quick bites of wisdom to empower your financial journey (while keeping it short). Be sure to sign-up below to get these messages in your inbox.
All for now,
Lindsey