Suffer to succeed

Amongst self-limiting beliefs, this is a hard one...

Probably the hardest self-limiting belief any indie entrepreneur can have:

The belief that you need to suffer to succeed.

I saw this on my social feeds the other day and it got me thinking:

“…Making things hard, believing we need to suffer to achieve or succeed are all signs that we may be unconsciously living out patterns of self-punishment.” - @sheleanaaiyana

Do I have a self-punishment tendency?
Is that why the success I seek eludes me?
Or why I always feel I won’t achieve without some epic struggle?

An example:

I work hard for Lifelog. I do #100daysofmarketing. Write 100 blog posts in 100 days. And more. I chose the hard challenge, thinking with it, success will come. But most of the time, going hard on distribution makes sense if you’re sure of the ROI. When in early stages, it’s good to experiment and see which channel works. Smell around for the opportunity first. Be lazy, be opportunistic, be a flaneur. Yet I presumed whichever requires an epic struggle is the solution.

I don’t know why, but I’m beginning to see patterns of self-punishment. At least for myself.

And the successful folks whom I look up to, seem to land on opportunities left right centre, like it’s nothing. They work hard too though, but I never get a sense that they’re seeking to struggle. In fact, very often it’s the opposite – they seek to get away with less.

They don’t require suffering to succeed.

On the other hand, I seem to get drawn to suffering for success.

Do you feel this way too?

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