Whatever your goals, it’s the struggle to get there that’s most rewarding.
have in common? Besides being things that everybody wants, they are all byproducts of setting, working toward, and accomplishing at least some of one’s goals. It turns out that it’s the struggle that matters.
Yet the zeitgeist commands otherwise. We live in an age in which technology dominates the conversation. And the sole purpose of technology is to make life easier. Effort, doing the things we consider difficult, runs counter to the narrative that bombards us. Today’s parents go out of their way to make things easy for their children, but in removing all obstacles, they’ve succeeded largely in making kids miserable. What if the message of ease is oversold? What if ease is good only intermittently, between bouts of struggle? Most of us now know that physical labor is so good for us that we give up free time to do a voluntary version—working out. We accept that we fall apart physically if we don’t have physical challenges. Psychological distress is rampant, especially among the young. What follows is evidence that the desire for ease mires people in the very problems they are looking to escape.At age 8, Islam Borinca was forced to trek for days with his mother and younger siblings from their home in Kosovo to neighboring Albania while his father and older brother were taken away and, he later learned, murdered. In the refugee camp, feeling confused, fearful, “incomplete”—while hoping his family might someday be reunited—Borinca transposed war images from his brain to paper, struggling to make sense of what had happened. Months later, after returning to ashes, the totality of loss, and. Driven to understand human conflict and carve pathways to reconciliation, he eventually won a scholarship from the Swiss government, earned a Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Geneva, did postdoctoral research in Ireland, and now, at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, studies dehumanization, reconciliation, and intergroup healing. “I learned thatcan’t be erased, but it can be transformed,” he says . “I am no longer defined by what I survived but by what I contribute. The shift from being a war-affected child to somebody helping others understand and heal the psychological wounds of conflict has been the defining transformation of my life.”Struggle is our natural inheritance, the state to which we are adapted. In its absence, we are psychically fragile, heir to ills like anxiety and self-doubt.Here’s a basic fact to consider: Before the advent of agriculture some 10,000 years ago, all our hominid ancestors were nomads. In the several million years that our forebears inhabited the broad savannahs of Africa, they migrated with the available food resources. That ancient reality has ongoing implications for our lives today, because organisms evolved to live in the specific conditions that dominated their ancestral environments. And the absence of those conditions has an array of adverse consequences that are hallmarks of modern existence. Here is a brief list of some of the conditions that prevailed until agriculture and industrialization birthed the modern world:Formal education did not exist, information and culture were transmitted in other ways. When an organism finds itself in an environment that varies in significant ways from the conditions to which its every biological cell and neural synapse has tuned itself, we are staring at what is known as evolutionary mismatch. And evolutionary mismatch often has unexpected adverse consequences. Taking the long-lens view indicates that many of the chronic problems modern humanity seriously struggles with result from an evolutionary mismatch. Depression, anxiety,are just a few mental health disturbances thought to arise from the incongruity between modern lifestyles and psychological mechanisms deeply embedded in the human brain, adapted over eons to the conditions that prevailed for more than 99 percent of human history—the so-called “environment of evolutionary adaptedness” . Similarly, the EEA helps explain our outsized taste for chocolate-frosted cupcakes. A preference for sweet and fat-laden foods helped our ancestors consume enough calories to get them through the famines that occurred with regularity. Today whole industries exist just to exploit those evolved preferences—at the cost of obesity, diabetes, gastrointestinal disorders, and much psychological distress. Mismatch helps explain why loneliness, anxiety, and depression are found at particularly high frequency in large cities: Our minds did not evolve for living alone and anonymously in urban environments filled with millions of strangers. They did develop under conditions of small-scale social living, and the evidence suggests that we still function at our best and are at our happiest in such environments.The life of a nomad is inherently demanding, requiring large expenditures of physical energy. Our nomadic forebears were constantly outdoors traveling great distances just to find food. They often ran miles a day in hunting down game to feed the tribe. As a result, the human body evolved to conserve energy, reserving it for the famines and otherThe same metabolic adaptations that kept our nomadic ancestors alive are now spectacularly mismatched to a world in which for many of us there is little need to engage in any physical exercise on any day. And the goal of technology is to unencumber life even further. Like bodies, minds evolved to work hard. It took mental effort for our ancestors to solve such everyday problems as how to move a large volume of water from one location to another. An abundance of contemporary research demonstrates the persisting value of stimulating the mind, even at an advanced age. Studies show that engaging in such cognitive challenges as doing crossword puzzles has an array of benefits, including longevity—it reduces the risk of developingWe need challenging environments because they activate internal mechanisms of adaptation and growth. In their absence—like an immune system overprotected and shielded from pathogens—we are prone to all manner of ills, weaker physically and psychologically. Operating at the edge of difficulty, minds not only recruit resources to grow, they lay the foundation for personal well-being. In resolving existing problems, people discover their capabilities and develop confidence in them. They gain knowledge about the world and themselves. They build a sense of mastery, a belief that they can manage what life throws their way, a prerequisite forYet, right now, in 2025, an explosion of technology promises to heighten the evolutionary mismatch that’s already creating rising levels of mental malaise among the young, pitting the need for mental struggle against the ease of pawning off learning assignments to generative. Just as human bodies in the industrialized world must now find their way to the gym, so are minds in need of, say, sharpening their sense of irony and grasping the nuances of language by painstakingly analyzing Shakespeare’s famously profound plays. If we want people to live their best lives, we need to understand our evolutionary history. And then put that knowledge to use so that we make the healthiest choices for our bodies and our minds.., is a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and the author of several books, including. After 22 years of teaching Spanish in Milford, a small city in coastal Connecticut, Kimberly Vigil was fried. She still loved teaching, but now, by the time she got home every afternoon, she was too emotionally drained to be available to her own kids. Yet teaching was all she knew how to do. Or thought she could do. Earlier this year, a job posting caught her: Her school district needed an assistant head of human resources. Could she leap beyond what she’d always done to what she possibly could do, even though there was no trace of it on her résumé? Would she let herself believe she could do it? She read the job description over and over, parsing every requirement, retrofitting herself to it. No, she didn’t have hard experience in talent management, but she’d always supported and helped other teachers move along. Taking even small risks was not in her, but she mustered the courage to apply—and got the job. Doing the hard thing transformed how she sees herself, Vigil says. She feels “excited, innovative, empowered.” She carries a notebook just to capture all the ideas she gets for new initiatives. “I feel more confident, see many more opportunities, and now feel I deserve a seat at the table.” But it didn’t feel real until the first day of what used to be summer vacation. “When I didn’t wake up wondering what to do and headed into work, it felt official.”Too often, we see difficulty as pathology, not as a signal of possibility. In fact, in the right amount, problems spark systems of adaptation and growth.Although our species seems hardwired to avoid discomfort at all costs, we often thrive because of it. Across biology, psychology, and, a clear message emerges to those willing to listen: Some of the most powerful growth systems in our bodies and brains are activated only when we encounter challenges.roots than their gust-free counterparts. In what plant physiologist Mark Jaffe coined thigmomorphogenesis, it is the mechanics of the shaking itself that strengthens roots through chemical responses uniquely coded to counter rough environments. The same holds true across the animal world, where organisms exposed to adversity often adapt in beneficial ways. One well-documented example is calorie restriction. From yeast to fruit flies to primates, study after study has shown that reduced caloric intake is linked to longer lifespans. The findings don’t suggest starvation is the key to a better life but, rather, that encountering a controlled challenge can trigger deep systemic adaptations that can be beneficial on the whole.when properly calibrated. Subsequent studies have shown that techniques that feel easier, such as passively listening to lectures without putting your knowledge to the test, often results in weaker performance. Methods that feel harder, like consistently testing yourself, spacing your practice, or mixing up topics, produce deeper, longer lasting mastery across domains. And yet, these are often exactly the methods we avoid. Studies have shown that spaced repetition, self-testing, and interleaving topics all impose a cognitive load that encourages the brain to encode information more robustly. In a striking 2022 study, a team of researchers led by Louis Deslauriers at Harvard University found that students actually rated passive lectures more highly than active learning environments, even though they learned less from them. The explanation is as obvious as it is intuitive: Effort simply feels bad. When learning feels hard, we assume something is going wrong. When it feels easy, we assume we’re succeeding. It’s all a cognitive mirage whereby our minds confuse fluency with mastery and ease with progress. It’s the things you wrestle with that you retain. Perhaps something deep in us resists hard things, even when they’re good for us, just because of our evolutionary history of difficulty. In prehistoric environments, energy conservation was critical, and taking the long road to eke out one more item retained in our working memory wouldn’t have conferred much of a reproductive advantage. But that ancient algorithm now finds itself operating in the omni-optimized modern world, where complex problems, abstract skills, and the long-term goals we set for ourselves demand a very different kind of approach to effort. In the end, we’re built to survive, not always to thrive. And yet, we’re by no means captives of our evolutionary comfort zones. The early 20th-century psychologist Lev Vygotsky gave us an enduring framework for understanding how learning happens: the zone of proximal development, which describes the space between what a learner can do on their own and what they could do with support. True development happens in that in-between zone when we’re pushed just beyondThis “Goldilocks zone” of challenge is where good instruction lives, both that which we receive and that which we confer on ourselves. With enough scaffolding, discomfort becomes fuel for growth, not friction that hinders it. Sometimes strain is necessary, and the pain that accompanies it is a signal that we’re stretching, reaching, and changing.Even stress, deemed one of the greatest villains of modern life, is good for us in the right doses. Physiologist Hans Selye, in the 1930s, formalized the concept of, showing how the body can sometimes respond positively to stress by making us more alert, empowered, and even creative. More recently, Stanford University psychologist Alia Crum has shown that simply reframing stress as a challenge rather than a threat recruits a set of positive emotions that not only motivate people to engage in difficult activities but insulate them from the physiological harm of stress. In Crum’s studies, participants who were taught to view stress as a helpful response rather than a harmful one had blunted cortisol reactivity, better performance under pressure, and increased cognitive flexibility. The mindset we bring to stress influences what it does to the body. It verges on a general principle: Low doses of any kind of stressor can have positive effects. Toxicologists know that small amounts of a toxin can have beneficial impacts on the body, a phenomenon they refer to as. Biology offers its own proof: Muscles build only when pushed beyond their baseline limits, tearing microscopically before they grow back stronger. The immune system calibrates not through shelter but through exposure to real threats it learns to overcome. In short, some levers get pulled only when stressed. And yet, in our comfort-optimized settings, these systems sit underutilized if not entirely discarded. We see challenges as optional and avoidable. When friction does arise, we’re all too quick to treat it as pathology instead of possibility. Although the idea of making things harder on purpose sounds plucked from a dystopian novel, it might be exactly what we need to live more fulfilled lives. Effort, when chosen deliberately and applied wisely, is a stimulus that wakes up ancient systems for growth that otherwise lie dormant. It calls on deeper Nietzsche’s famous aphorism, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” is just as widely quoted as it is dismissed. And yet, modern science suggests he was on to something. Not because all suffering is noble or worth pursuing in itself. But because certain forms of challenge, strain, and discomfort are paths to growth, and when we avoid all difficulty, we risk avoiding the very forces that make us stronger, smarter, and more alive. So if you find yourself in the thick of something hard, an uphill project, a thorny problem, or a skill that just won’t click, the discomfort you feel isn’t a glitch. Instead, it’s a feature trying to pull on a lever your brain probably forgot it had.. No one knows that Katarine Hofke is getting her bachelor’s degree . Online. No interaction with teachers. They’d just expect her to fail. And mock her dream of getting a Ph.D. in psychology. At Princeton. A happyin a small German town ended abruptly when she started school, age 6. Reading was difficult. She couldn’t hold a pencil right, her teachers insisted. They called her lazy—and added extra work until she got everything right. The terrible start not only convinced her she was stupid, it put her on track for vocational training. She cried for two days when, at the end of fourth grade, she was the only one in her class assigned to “the stupid kids school.” There her classmates were mostly kids with learning disabilities or from troubled families. “Their suffering was different from my suffering, but we all needed help we didn’t get.” Wanting never to see a teacher again, Hofke dropped out and enrolled in a private high school online. “No teachers. Just information.” She was warned it was hard, advised to become a baker instead. She plowed ahead. Devastated after failing one final by one point, she decamped to Slovenia, a place she’d always enjoyed on vacations, and volunteered in an afterschool program. There, with no one who knew her, there was no one to judge her. She developed workshops for kids. She thrived. “I noticed I can do things.” She got her spark back and returned to retake her finals, spending sleepless weeks subsisting on instant mashed potatoes. The day she passed “was probably the best day of my life,” she says. Her ultimate goal is to start an organization to motivate young people to find their way. “It’s very important that I give what I wish I could have had.”You know the moment. The email you need to send. The hard truth you need to speak. The goal you keep putting off because it scares you a little and matters a lot. We all want to be courageous, to speak up, to pursue the goals that thrill us and make our stomachs flip. But when the moment arrives, As psychologist Daniel Kahneman found, we’re more motivated to avoid pain than to pursue reward. We’re biologically biased toward playing it safe. Modern culture doesn’t help. It markets comfort as. It tells us to wait until we feel ready—until the fear disappears. But readiness is a myth, and comfort is overrated. The key to a fulfilling life isn’t avoiding discomfort; it’s moving ahead anyway. When you confront the fear holding you back, you not only feel good, you feel proud. You build courage. And you avoid the deeper pain of regret. Bravery is the choice to move despite the fear, taking steps forward with your heart pounding, palms sweating.Courage isn’t something you either have or don’t; rather, it’s something you build through intention and action, the same way you build strength: by doing what feels hard, over and over, until it doesn’t anymore. With each rep, your belief in your own capacity expands. Psychologist Albert Bandura called this—the belief that you can influence your own outcomes; it’s one of the strongest predictors of success across domains. Every time you act in the face of fear, you create an experience of mastery, real-world evidence that you can handle hard things. The small wins stack up, reinforcing your identity as someone capable and resilient. The shift in self-perception is powerful. You start to feel stronger, prouder, more confident, one uncomfortable moment at a time. Every act of courage physically changes your brain. When you act while afraid, the anterior cingulate cortex, which helps detect conflict and sustain effort, and the prefrontal cortex, which supports planning and, both activate. The more you engage them, the more efficient the circuit becomes, the easier it is to do hard things.—the proposition that doing the hard, scary thing is possible and worth it. Mindset matters. When you believe that your abilities can improve through effort, you’re more likely to take on challenges, persist through setbacks, and succeed.This is hard. I’m scared. And that’s exactly why it matters . When you learn to sit with discomfort, you start to realize that fear is a signal that you’re stretching into something meaningful. You transform fear from something paralyzing to something energizing. Reframing fear from a sign of danger to the passage to growth reduces avoidance and improves the ability to stay engaged under pressure. It also feeds learned optimism, the idea first articulated by psychologistAny path worth taking includes stress, discomfort, and uncertainty. That’s the signal to lean in, what the United States Marine Corps callsBelief may be where bravery begins, but without action, it’s just a daydream. This is where many people get stuck: They’re waiting for the fear to disappear before moving. The most successful, fulfilled people act while their hands shake and their stomachs churn. That’s what separates intention from transformation. It’s important to have a goal that not only matters and feels a little scary because it calls you to reach but also is in keeping with your core values. Because they are in line with your identity and sense of purpose, such self-concordant goals are most likely to sparkOnce you’ve named a meaningful goal, it’s time to get tactical. You need to build the habits that carry you forward even when you don’t feel like doing anything. You turn to implementation intentions. Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer finds that creating simple “if-then” plans significantly increases follow-through.in the moment. You preload your decision, making action automatic. Over time, the resulting consistency builds momentum—and reshapes your identity. What once required effort becomes part of who you are. Still, even the best habits won’t prevent setbacks. Prepare for them. Imagine your desired future, then identify the internal and external obstacles that might get in the way. The dual focus—optimism plus realism—is the difference between chasing a goal and designing for success. Don’t obsess over the finish line. Focus on daily progress. Celebrate small wins. Confidence grows through mastery—real-life proof that you can do hard things. Each small step builds success, deepens self-respect, and transforms identity from someone who hesitates to someone who follows through, someone you can count on.Even with a brave mindset and consistent action, your environment plays a powerful role in shaping your courage. If you’re surrounded by people who avoid risk or secretly hope you don’t outgrow them, your bravery will stall. You need a tribe, people who push you to go harder, be better, and stay honest when you’d rather coast. Internal motivation gets you started, but external support keeps you going when things get uncomfortable. If your circle normalizes playing small, you’ll shrink to fit. But spend time with people who chase big goals and walk through fear, and that rubs off. Instead of hanging around with people who validate your excuses, find the ones who intimidate you because they’ve done the things you’re aiming to do. Then become such a person for someone else. When you offer support, give real feedback, or help someone through a tough stretch, you reinforce your own identity and motivation to follow through. Bravery may start within you, but it gets amplified by who’s walking beside you.Every time you act in the presence of fear, you’re becoming someone stronger, more capable, more you. Bravery becomes more than something you do—it’s someone you are—and it enables you to build a flourishing life, one with deep meaning and achievement. Brave mindset, brave action, and brave relationships augment each other to give you something even more powerful: agency. The real payoff of bravery is realizing that you can shape your future. The more you face fear, the more you reinforce the belief that you can influence what happens next. That’s agency. And that’s the foundation of a high-impact life., is the CEO of Breakthrough Leadership Group and the author of The Bravery Effect.Whatever your goals, it’s the struggle to get there that’s most rewarding. It’s almost as if life itself is inviting us to embrace difficulty—not as punishment but as a design feature. It's a robust system for growth.Self Tests are all about you. Are you outgoing or introverted? Are you a narcissist? Does perfectionism hold you back? Find out the answers to these questions and more with Psychology Today.
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