Struggles Make Us Stronger Quotes

But my history isn’t something I should hide from or be ashamed of. Everyone has dealt with things in their past. It’s not our struggles that make us who we are, it’s how we respond to them.

Struggle does not make you weak,” she whispers back. “Struggling against those who hold us is what makes us, over time, stronger than they are. Strong enough to fight back. Strong enough to win.

These [the armed forces] are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, every where.... Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage, and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises.

This has been her life for the past fifty years, this striving to help save the world a little bit, to push it just a bit farther into the right. This action was the only thing that sustained her during the hard times [when] only her purposeful life propped her up from total collapse, and she thought how strange that she had taught the morality play Everyman all those years but didn’t fully understand its central lesson or how true it was: We are our good deeds, and they alone will come with us into the afterlife.

We simply do not allow space in our hearts, minds, or souls for darkness. Instead, we choose faith. Faith in ourselves and the power of hard work. Faith in our God whose overwhelming love sustains us every single day. That's what we choose. We choose love. Our love for our children. Our commitment to leaving them a better world. Our love for our country which has given us so many blessings and advantages. Our love for our fellow citizens: parents working hard to support their kids, men and women in uniform who risk everything to keep us safe, young people from the toughest background who never stop believing in their dreams, some people like so many of you. That's what we choose. And we choose excellence. We choose to tune out all the noise and strive for excellence in everything we do. No cutting corners, no taking shortcuts, no whining. We give 120% every single time. Because excellence is the most powerful answer you can give to the doubters and the haters. It's also the most powerful thing you can do for yourself. Because the process of striving, and struggling, and pushing yourself to new heights, that's how you develop your God-given talent. That's how you make yourself stronger, and smarter, and more able to make a difference for others.

Achievements make us thankful; struggles make us stronger. When we appreciate our struggles, adversities become opportunities - isn’t that the essence of life?

Kindly permit me to tell you, sir, that I hate you. I hate you and your child, as I hate the life of which you are the representative: cheap, ridiculous, but yet triumphant life, the everlasting antipodes and deadly enemy of beauty. I cannot say I despise you - for I am honest. You are stronger than I. I have no armour for the struggle between us, I have only the Word, avenging weapon of the weak. Today I have availed myself of this weapon. This letter is nothing but an act of revenge - you see how honourable I am - and if any word of mine is sharp and bright and beautiful enough to strike home, to make you feel the presence of a power you do not know, to shake even a minute your robust equilibrium, I shall rejoice indeed. -

If we have something to aim for, then the unavoidable struggle will have a sense of meaning to it. Hardship stretches us and enables us to realise our potential. This is how we grow. We don't grow without pressure. But if we are unable to find meaning in hardship; we just wither. Do we see hardship as a meaningless way to make us suffer, or do we see it as a meaningful way to make us stronger?

Then I spoke with proven shapers I knew—Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Reed Hastings, Muhammad Yunus, Geoffrey Canada, Jack Dorsey (of Twitter), David Kelley (of IDEO), and more. They had all visualized remarkable concepts and built organizations to actualize them, and done that repeatedly and over long periods of time. I asked them to take an hour’s worth of personality assessments to discover their values, abilities, and approaches. While not perfect, these assessments have been invaluable. (In fact, I have been adapting and refining them to help us in our recruiting and management.) The answers these shapers provided to the standardized questions gave me objective and statistically measurable evidence about their similarities and differences. It turns out they have a lot in common. They are all independent thinkers who do not let anything or anyone stand in the way of achieving their audacious goals. They have very strong mental maps of how things should be done, and at the same time a willingness to test those mental maps in the world of reality and change the ways they do things to make them work better. They are extremely resilient, because their need to achieve what they envision is stronger than the pain they experience as they struggle to achieve it. Perhaps most interesting, they have a wider range of vision than most people, either because they have that vision themselves or because they know how to get it from others who can see what they can’t. All are able to see both big pictures and granular details (and levels in between) and synthesize the perspectives they gain at those different levels, whereas most people see just one or the other. They are simultaneously creative, systematic, and practical. They are assertive and open-minded at the same time. Above all, they are passionate about what they are doing, intolerant of people who work for them who aren’t excellent at what they do, and want to have a big, beneficial impact on the world.

Struggling against those who hold us is what makes us, over time, stronger than they are. Strong enough to fight back. Strong enough to win.

You are stronger than I. I have no armour for the struggle between us, I have only the Word, avenging weapon of the weak. Today I have availed myself of this weapon. This letter is nothing but an act of revenge - you see how honourable I am - and if any word of mine is sharp and bright and beautiful enough to strike home, to make you feel the presence of a power you do not know, to shake even a minute your robust equilibrium, I shall rejoice indeed.” - Tristan

think we are all conspiracy theorists when it comes to God. We find ourselves doubting His intentions when the story lines don’t make sense. When it comes to deciphering the world, our culture relies on logic and emotion, not on tradition or authority. Perhaps the most radical thing God could require of us is to believe what He says.

It's funny how you never know how much you can handle until it gets worse. And just when you get used to that, it happens again. But somehow, even with this experience you find a way to make it work because that is how you cope. Not because you deserve it or because you need the experience to set priorities, but because it's the human thing and it is life. And through this experience we will grow, find out what the holiday means and learn to expect more of each other. Together we will use this struggle to make us stronger as a family and support each other when we break down. That is what a family does and how we cope.

I had not liked him. I had struggled against him and for him, I had cursed him and thanked him, despised him and admired him. I hated his religion and its cold disapproving gaze, its malevolence that cloaked itself in pretended kindness, and its allegiance to a god who would drain the joy from the world by naming it sin, but Alfred’s religion had made him a good man and a good king. And Alfred’s joyless soul had proved a rock against which the Danes had broken themselves. Time and again they had attacked, and time and again Alfred had out-thought them, and Wessex grew ever stronger and richer and all that was because of Alfred. We think of kings as privileged men who rule over us and have the freedom to make, break and flaunt the law, but Alfred was never above the law he loved to make. He saw his life as a duty to his god and to the people of Wessex and I have never seen a better king, and I doubt my sons, grandsons and their children’s children will ever see a better one. I never liked him, but I have never stopped admiring him. He was my king and all that I now have I owe to him. The food that I eat, the hall where I live and the swords of my men, all started with Alfred, who hated me at times, loved me at times, and was generous with me. He was a gold-giver.

Southerners have a lot to be proud of. We have survived, and we have overcome. Southern women, especially, have learned to be proud of what they have and patient for what they want--even revenge. That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, as the old saying goes, and darlin’, there is just no way to ever kill the pride and joy of being a Grits. Wisdom, courage, sacrifice, and determination are the lessons of our history. Southerners know and understand our past as a people, which is why we are all connected, no matter our status in life. We recognize kinship as the golden threads that are woven through our past: the struggles, the pain, and the power of overcoming.

I think that suffering is the way we test our love. Every act of suffering, no matter how small or agonisingly great, is a test of love in some way. Most of the time, suffering is also a test of our love for God... I think that there are two points about suffering that we should remember, and they have to do with pleasure and pain. The first is this: that pain and suffering are connected, but they are not the same thing. Pain can exist without suffering, and it is also possible to suffer without feeling pain... ...The difference between them is this, I think: that what we learn from pain--for example, that fire burns and is dangerous--is always individual, for ourselves alone, but what we learn from suffering is what unites us as one human people. If we do not suffer with our pain, then we have not learned about anything but ourselves. Pain without suffering is like victory without struggle. We do not learn from it what makes us stronger or better or closer to God. - Abdel Khader Khan

Lots of people have been taught to see homeless folks as the epitome of laziness, and to believe that laziness is the root cause of homeless people's suffering. This tendency to blame people for their own pain is comforting, in a twisted way; it allows us to close up our hearts and ignore the suffering of others. This same tendency also keeps us running endlessly on the hamster wheel of hyperproductivity. When we view homeless, unemployed, or impoverished people as victims of their own "laziness," our motivations to work backbreakingly hard gets stronger than ever. The fear of ending up homeless morphs into the fear of not working hard enough, which in turn makes life an endless slog of pushing ourselves past the brink and judging anyone who doesn't do the same. Lacking compassion for a struggling group of people actually makes it harder for us to be gentle with ourselves. Fighting the Laziness Lie can't stop at just encouraging people with full-time jobs to relax a bit and take more breaks.

Thus I was sick and tormented, reproaching myself more bitterly than ever, rolling and writhing in my chain till it should be utterly broken. By now I was held but slightly, but still was held. And thou, O Lord, didst press upon me in my inmost heart with a severe mercy, redoubling the lashes of fear and shame; lest I should again give way and that same slender remaining tie not be broken off, but recover strength and enchain me yet more securely. I kept saying to myself, "See, let it be done now; let it be done now." And as I said this I all but came to a firm decision. I all but did it -- yet I did not quite. Still I did not fall back to my old condition, but stood aside for a moment and drew breath. And I tried again, and lacked only a very little of reaching the resolve -- and then somewhat less, and then all but touched and grasped it. Yet I still did not quite reach or touch or grasp the goal, because I hesitated to die to death and to live to life. And the worse way, to which I was habituated, was stronger in me than the better, which I had not tried. And up to the very moment in which I was to become another man, the nearer the moment approached, the greater horror did it strike in me. But it did not strike me back, nor turn me aside, but held me in suspense. It was, in fact, my old mistresses, trifles of trifles and vanities of vanities, who still enthralled me. They tugged at my fleshly garments and softly whispered: "Are you going to part with us? And from that moment will we never be with you any more? And from that moment will not this and that be forbidden you forever?" What were they suggesting to me in those words "this or that"? What is it they suggested, O my God? Let thy mercy guard the soul of thy servant from the vileness and the shame they did suggest! And now I scarcely heard them, for they were not openly showing themselves and opposing me face to face; but muttering, as it were, behind my back; and furtively plucking at me as I was leaving, trying to make me look back at them. Still they delayed me, so that I hesitated to break loose and shake myself free of them and leap over to the place to which I was being called -- for unruly habit kept saying to me, "Do you think you can live without them?" But now it said this very faintly; for in the direction I had set my face, and yet toward which I still trembled to go ... for I still heard the muttering of those "trifles" and hung suspended ... This struggle raging in my heart was nothing but the contest of self against self.

But here’s where it gets really important: The way we remember yesterday profoundly shapes the choices we make today. We are not impartial decision makers, interpreting each new moment of choice from a position of neutrality. We are not like Switzerland. In fact, the way our memories drive us is more like a frenzied South American dictator. Our memories are dramatic and often lead us to make sweeping generalizations about our past, present, and future.

God will direct us into our new stories. In part 1, we talked about the sinister work of the enemy, who takes our memories and actively works to make our brokenness our ultimate truth.

It’s the struggles that make us stronger.

30. Storms Make You Stronger A lot of the advice in this book is about how to cope when things don’t go well. You see, life is unpredictable, and as sure as eggs is eggs, it won’t always swing your way. But when those storms come I have a clear and simple mantra: The time to shine is when it is darkest. In other words: when it is all going wrong, step up to the plate, give it your all, heave hardest on that rope, and show that you are bigger than the obstacle. Nature has a way of rewarding that sort of attitude. Sometimes life tests us a little. Things we had banked on coming in just don’t work out. People let you down, one disaster follows another. You know the phrase: it never rains but it pours. When those times come we have a choice: do we cower and get beaten or do we stand tall and face it? I liken it to the school bully. When you stand up to them, they often stand down. They are testing you to see what you are made of. Man or mouse? So use those tough times as an opportunity to show the world and yourself what you are made of. Regardless of how you feel, how you see yourself, I have learnt one key lesson from mountains and the wild: that underneath it all, we humans are made strong. We all behave and act a little differently, depending on how we have been brought up and what has been thrown at us in our lives - but the underlying truth is that the real core of each of us is strong. I have seen incredible heroics from unlikely people on mountains. But it took exceptional circumstances for that bravery to emerge. You see, we are all a bit like grapes: when you squeeze us, you see what we are made of. And I believe that most people are far stronger than they ever imagine. It is refined within us from thousands of years of having to survive as a species. It might be dusty and hidden away, but it is there somewhere inside you: the heart of a survivor. Courage. Tenacity. Strength. So don’t shy away from hard times, they are your chance to shine. Write this on your bathroom mirror: Struggle develops strength and storms make you stronger.

elders, always figure you need a lesson about struggle because they had so much of it in their lives. Maybe they think it makes us stronger. So they’ll teach, but they won’t coddle. They’ll oversee, but they won’t hover.

The desire for ease, comfort, and stress-free living is an indirect desire to remain an “unseasoned,” immature Christian. Struggle makes us stronger; it builds us up and deepens our faith.

No matter the struggles we face, all injustices are balanced out in time. Strive to do right by you. Do no harm, while keeping your beautiful being safe and always nourished with love. All challenges, when consciously faced, make us stronger, and with this strength we reach out our hand to others with flowers of compassion. You are a miraculous blessing.

No Ultimatums is a reminder that power struggles can lead us to lose our temper. Many parents scream or use physical punishment as a form of discipline. We lose control, and yet we expect our children not to. In an authoritarian parenting style, trust and closeness with their kids is replaced with fear. It works in the short term but can have consequences in the long run. The Danish, more diplomatic parenting style fosters trust and resilience in children. Kids who feel respected and understood, who in turn are helped to understand and respect rules, develop a much stronger sense of self-control and ultimately grow up to be happier, more emotionally stable adults. Togetherness and Hygge are ways of fostering our closest relationships, which are one of the biggest predictors of a person’s happiness. By learning how to hygge, or cozy around, we can improve our family get-togethers to make them more pleasant and memorable experiences for our kids.

After seeing Dylan with the redhead, I sunk deeper into a depression. Even working at Lark’s house did nothing to distract me. I simply went through the motions. Fortunately, Lark was especially tired and slept most of the day, so she never noticed my bad mood. Harlow wasn’t as oblivious as we washed dishes after dinner. “What’s up, stinky pup?” I rolled my eyes at her nickname for me. “Nothing.” “She doesn’t want to deal with the leaves,” Jace said from behind us. Our ten year old brother crossed his arms like Dad often did when suspicious. “See, she got spooked last night and bailed on raking the leaves. They ended up blowing around the yard and now she’s trying to get out of raking them again.” “That’s not it.” “Sure, it is,” he said, his dark hair covering his narrowed eyes. “What else could it be?” Grumpy, I decided to punish him. “It’s about a sexy guy.” Jace’s face twisted into horror. “Eww!” he cried, running out of the room. Harlow and I laughed at the sound of him telling on me to Mom. “In a few years, girls will be all he thinks about,” I said, returning to the dishes. Harlow leaned her head against my shoulder. “Sexy guy, huh?” “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for your fight?” Harlow glanced at the clock. “Yeah. When I get back, I want to hear about the sexy guy making you sigh so much.” As my sister dressed to go, I finished the dishes and struggled to stop sighing. I was still grumpy when Dad got home. In this living room, he told Harlow to be careful. She said something and laughed. When Harlow started fighting at the Thunderdome, she called herself Joy and hid it from our parents. She didn’t think they’d approve and she was right. Harlow and I were naïve to assume they wouldn’t find out long before she told them the truth though. Dad might be a pastor, but he learned about the Lord in prison. As a member of the Reapers, Dad had eyes and ears all over Ellsberg. He likely knew Harlow was fighting before she threw her first punch. Entering the kitchen, Dad smiled at me. “Stop talking about cute boys around your brother. He has a sensitive gag reflex.” I laughed as he got himself a beer and joined me at the sink. “Mom said we have leftovers. Mind warming them up for me?” Shaking my head, I filled a plate and set it in the microwave. “Are you okay?” Dad asked, frowning at me. “You look worn down.” “I had a long day.” “You sure that’s it?” We watched each other and I remembered the first time he asked if I was okay. Five years earlier when I was brought to this house and met my new family. I didn’t remember a lot from that day besides thinking these people were too good to be true. I figured they’d wait until Kirk was gone then hurt me. I couldn’t remember when I knew Dad was a good man who loved me. Not like my real dad loved me. Tad felt the kind of love a person died to protect. I saw the love in his eyes as he waited for his food to finish warming. “I wish I was stronger.” “So do I,” he said softly. “Everyone does. They just don’t admit it. That’s what makes you so brave. You can admit your fears.” Even thinking he was full of shit, I smiled. “Thanks, Dad.” Taking his plate out of the microwave, he inhaled. “Mom makes the best meatloaf.” “I made it.” Grinning, Dad nudged me with his hip. “If you make this meatloaf for the boy you’re hung up on, you’ll own him.” “I’ll remember that.

Struggles not only make us into stronger, better and wiser people, they also let us learn more about ourselves and our purpose in life.

There was another whole bunch of hopefuls. They would diminish down at a startling rate. We had seen it happen before. This time, though, we were there as the “old hands.” And it helped. We knew what to expect; the mystique had gone, and the prize was up for grabs. That was empowering. It was now wintertime, and winter Selection is always considered the tougher course, because of the mountain conditions. I tried not to think about this. Instead of the blistering heat and midges, our enemies would be the freezing, driving sleet, the high winds, and the short daylight hours. These made Trucker and me look back on the summer Selection days as quite balmy and pleasant! It is strange how accustomed you become to hardship, and how what once seemed horrific can soon become mundane. The DS had often told us: “If it ain’t raining, it ain’t training.” And it rains a lot in the Brecon Beacons. Trust me. (I recently overheard our middle boy, Marmaduke, tell one of his friends this SAS mantra. The other child was complaining that he couldn’t go outside because it was raining. Marmaduke, age four, put him straight. Priceless.) The first few weekends progressed, and we both shone. We were fitter, stronger, and more confident than many of the other recruits, but the winter conditions were very real. We had to contend with winds that, on one weekend exercise, were so strong on the high ridges that I saw one gust literally blow a whole line of soldiers off their feet--including the DS. Our first night march saw one recruit go down with hypothermia. Like everyone else, he was wet and cold, but in the wind and whiteout he had lost that will to look after himself, and to take action early. He had forgotten the golden rule of cold, which the DS had told us over and over: “Don’t let yourself get cold. Act early, while you still have your senses and mobility. Add a layer, make shelter, get moving faster--whatever your solution us, just do it.” Instead, this recruit had just sat down in the middle of the boggy moon grass and stopped. He could hardly talk and couldn’t stand. We all gathered round him, forming what little shelter we could. We gave him some food and put an extra layer of clothing on him. We then helped him stagger off the mountain to where he could be picked up by Land Rover and taken to base camp, where the medics could help him. For him, that would be his last exercise with 21 SAS, and a harsh reminder that the struggles of Selection go beyond the demons in your head. You also have to be able to survive the mountains, and in winter that isn’t always easy. One of the other big struggles of winter Selection was trying to get warm in the few hours between the marches. In the summer it didn’t really matter if you were cold and wet--it was just unpleasant rather than life-threatening. But in winter, if you didn’t sort yourself out, you would quickly end up with hypothermia, and then one of two things would happen: you would either fail Selection, or you would die. Both options were bad.

You can be tough on civilians, on people who “don’t understand” what you’ve been through. But the battlefield isn’t the only place where people suffer. Hardship hits in a million places. And lots of people, including your neighbors, have suffered more than any soldier, and they’ve done so with none of your training, with no unit around them, with no hospital to care for them, and sometimes with no community to support them. And when those people reflect on their suffering, they often uncover a similar truth: that struggle helped them to build deep reservoirs of strength. Not all growth happens this way. But a great deal of our growth does come when we put our shoulder into what’s painful. We choose to, or have to, step beyond the margins of our past experience and do something hard and new.   Of course fear does not automatically lead to courage. Injury does not necessarily lead to insight. Hardship will not automatically make us better. Pain can break us or make us wiser. Suffering can destroy us or make us stronger. Fear can cripple us, or it can make us more courageous. It is resilience that makes the difference.

There will be struggles, there will be fears, and it won't always be easy. At times it will feel really hard. And you might make a mess of things. You may fall down. You may fail. But you will also get back up, and you will rise a little stronger and a little taller. Because there really is more inside you than you know. And this world needs your gifts, your talents, your big ideas. And maybe you are just getting started. What if you are only scratching the surface of what you can do and who you can be? What if you have talents you haven't discovered yet? There is something powerful, even magical, about you. You already have everything it takes to do big things. Maybe you have no idea just how good you really can be? And maybe you don't know how much you matter? But maybe, just maybe, the world has been waiting centuries for someone exactly like you. One thing is for sure, you are here. And because you are here... anything is possible.

But developing resilience is not just a matter of seeking out stress and struggle in the service of meaningful ends. We must also learn to cope with the more severe forms of adversity which no one in their right mind voluntarily invites into life. While we like to believe that cruel twists of fate happen only to others, the longer we live, the more likely it becomes that such a time will befall us. It would be ideal if Nietzsche’s saying “That which does not kill you makes you stronger.” (Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols) were true for everyone. But severe adversity tends to destroy more people than it elevates. So how can we be one of the few who are not battered and broken by the more distressing periods of life? One technique we can use to gain this type of resilience is what the Stoics called “premeditation of evils”. Rather than living with a naive optimism that everything will work out in the end, we should periodically meditate on losing the things we cherish most. They thought that if we make a habit of visualizing career or relationship failure, sickness, betrayal, or even death, we will become akin to the king who fortifies his kingdom from invasion. Over time we will develop a psychological armor to help us endure the hardships of life. “He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand.” (Seneca, Letters from a Stoic) wrote Seneca.

struggle is a profound source of originality. And restraint makes us vastly stronger.

Within the pages of a book, you'll find a sanctuary from anxiety. Each word is a stepping stone, leading you away from worry and into worlds of wonder. Reading is not just an escape, it's a journey towards inner peace. So, pick up a book and let it be your shield against anxiety, your beacon in the storm. Remember, every chapter you conquer makes you stronger. In the quiet rustle of pages turning, you'll find solace. Each story is a new perspective, a fresh lens to view the world. They teach us resilience, courage, and the power of imagination. They remind us that we are not alone in our struggles, and that our fears are but shadows in the grand tapestry of life. So, let the words wash over you, let them anchor you in the present, and guide you towards tranquility. Let the characters' journeys inspire your own, and know that just as they overcome their trials, so too can you overcome yours. Reading is not just a pastime, it's a lifeline. It's a testament to the human spirit's ability to rise above, to fight, to heal. In the end, remember this: A book is a friend that never lets you down. It's a light in the darkness, a solace in times of anxiety. So, keep reading, keep exploring, and let the power of words guide you towards a calmer, stronger, and more resilient you.

struggle makes us stronger, it awakens the giants within us.

Those little struggles lead us to wonder if we really have what it takes to make it in our lives, or if maybe we missed an important class somewhere about how to actually be a joyful and free human being.

We became friends, close friends, closer friends. We shared secrets. My heart felt more whole when I was with him. When we were apart, I thought about him. I was in love. Doomsday was upon us. And then, to my surprise, doomsday never came. As our relationship grew stronger and deeper, it became more life-giving. I loved him (in a messy, don’t-try-this-at-home-kids kind of way), and he loved me (though rather differently, I assumed), and it was strange and wonderful and at the same time perfectly ordinary. The fact that I was drawn to him in too many ways—that I had to struggle not to make him the object of my fantasies—that made things even more complicated. But it was worth the struggle to love and be loved deeply.