Don’t Avoid Difficulty
The strength you’re looking for is hiding inside the pain you’re running from
Most people think they want growth. What they really want is to be comfortable while growing. That’s the problem.
Growth doesn’t come from comfort. It comes from struggle, from mistakes, from things not going the way you planned. In fact, the moment you start avoiding difficulty, you stop growing altogether. You flatten out. You shrink. And eventually, you disappear.
There’s a reason Marcus Aurelius—arguably the most powerful man in the world at the time—spent his nights scribbling philosophical reminders to himself like a desperate soldier trying to stay sane in a war zone. He wasn’t writing for applause. He was writing to survive the mental grind of a life that never let up.
He understood something most of us spend our lives trying to avoid: difficulty isn’t a detour. It’s the path.
And once you internalize that, everything changes.
The Emperor’s Problem
In Meditations, Marcus is constantly bracing himself for hard days. He writes things like:
“Today I shall meet with meddling, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious men.”
Not because he was pessimistic. But because he knew that by naming difficulty, he could face it more clearly. He could absorb it. Move through it. Use it.
He also reminds himself that pain, hardship, and death are natural—no different than spring following winter. The Stoics didn’t believe in dodging the hard stuff. They believed in stepping into it and letting it shape you.
What’s powerful is that Marcus wasn’t sitting in a cave writing this. He was running an empire. He was at war. He was losing people he loved. He wasn’t avoiding hardship—he was in it, every day. And instead of pretending he could rise above it, he trained himself to walk through it with calm, grace, and discipline.
He didn’t run from the fire. He made it his fuel.
The Wilderness Doesn't Care
Centuries later, a man named Simon Kenton did something similar—but with his body instead of a journal. His story, as told in The Frontiersmen, is raw, violent, and full of setbacks. He’s hunted, beaten, imprisoned, nearly killed multiple times. He makes terrible choices. He loses people he loves. And he keeps going.
He doesn’t have Stoic philosophy or elegant words. He just has grit.
One moment from Kenton’s story stands out: after escaping from near death, he’s forced to survive alone in the wilderness—injured, starved, constantly under threat. But instead of breaking, he adapts. His body changes. His instincts sharpen. He becomes something else. Something more dangerous. More focused. More alive.
He doesn’t avoid difficulty. He becomes someone who can live inside it.
This is what real resilience looks like. Not a buzzword. Not a bumper sticker. But a full-body transformation, born of pain, repetition, and sheer necessity.
And here’s the thing: it didn’t make him soft. It made him a legend.
What’s Actually at Stake
It’s tempting to think that avoiding difficulty keeps you safe. That if you just play it smart, or small, or strategic enough, you can sidestep the pain and still get the prize.
But that’s not how it works.
Avoiding difficulty doesn’t protect you. It makes you fragile. And when something does hit—and it always does—you shatter.
Marcus Aurelius warns of this. He says avoiding hardship is like trying to escape nature itself. And nature doesn’t care about your schedule. It doesn’t care about your goals, your dreams, or your five-year plan. It just is. And if you can’t face that—if you can’t stand up to it—you’ll spend your whole life flinching.
Kenton didn’t have the option to flinch. The woods didn’t care. The weather didn’t care. The tribes and soldiers chasing him didn’t care. And oddly, that made things simple. He couldn’t lie to himself. He had to rise.
We may not live in a forest or a battlefield, but the principle still holds. The world does not care how comfortable you are. So you can either run from hard things—or you can decide to become the kind of person who can take a hit, adapt, and keep going.
That’s leadership. That’s power.
Softness Is a Trap
In modern life, it’s easy to surround ourselves with comfort. Easy to scroll instead of think. Easy to blame instead of act. Easy to rationalize failure as someone else’s fault.
But every time we choose comfort over growth, we give something away. A piece of our strength. A piece of our self-respect. A piece of our future.
That’s not a warning. It’s a fact.
The Stoics had a word for this kind of slow decay: “soul sickness.” You start to feel heavy. Tired. Resentful. Because deep down, you know you’re hiding. You’re avoiding the very thing that would make you better.
And here’s the punchline: avoiding difficulty doesn’t make your life easier. It just makes you weaker.
Real Growth Looks Like This
Want to know if you’re on the right path?
Check if it hurts a little.
Are you uncomfortable? Good.
Are you unsure of yourself? Great.
Are you making mistakes? Perfect.
That’s what growth feels like.
Marcus didn’t write about victory. He wrote about the daily struggle to get his mind under control. To not lash out. To stay steady in chaos. To own failure, not flee from it.
Kenton didn’t win cleanly. He survived. He adapted. He paid for his mistakes, and in doing so, became something stronger.
None of it was easy. But it was all worth it.
How This Shows Up at B:Side
At B:Side, we don’t celebrate difficulty for difficulty’s sake. That would be dumb. Pain isn’t the point.
But we do believe this: the best ideas, teams, and leaders come through fire.
We don’t build our company around what’s easiest. We build it around what matters. That means hard calls. Tough conversations. Systems that force us to grow.
We don’t flinch when things get ugly. We dig in.
We ride for the brand. We own our mistakes. And we get back up when we fall.
That’s not just culture. That’s strategy.
Because in this market, in this economy, and in this world, strength wins. Not speed. Not luck. Not comfort. Strength.
Run Toward the Fire
If you’re waiting for the path to get easier, it won’t.
If you’re hoping for clarity before you act, you’ll wait forever.
If you think growth will come without cost, you’re lying to yourself.
The answer isn’t to avoid difficulty. It’s to step into it. With both feet. Eyes open. Back straight. Ready for whatever comes next.
Marcus Aurelius did it with a pen.
Simon Kenton did it with a rifle and his bare hands.
You can do it too.
So stop looking for the escape hatch. Burn the map. And run toward the fire.
That’s where you find out who you really are.