This website has one purpose: to reframe the meaning of difficulties.

A difficulty in life is an opportunity to gain meaning and grow. It is therefore wise not to shun difficulties, but to revere them.

When you do this, you enter a world of paradox where, as you add meaning, you also increase struggle. Of course, not all difficulties deliver meaning in a satisfying manner, every time, but even a difficulty we perceive to be meaningless has its lesson to teach.

This paradox works most of the time, but not all the time. Become sensitized to when you can use it. You must ask: Why do certain difficulties propel me forward, and why do others drive me nuts? The answer is what makes us individuals, with unique gifts and unique deficiencies.

When you’re are mindful of this principle of reversal, you force a change in your attitude toward the adversities afflicting you. You’re forced to re-interpret your burdens into sources not of meaningless misery but of satisfying growth.

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In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, poet

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
—Albert Einstein

If it was easy, everyone would do it.
—Anonymous

It doesn’t get easier: you just go faster.
—Greg LeMond, world-famous cyclist

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
—Eleanor Roosevelt, philanthropist, first-lady

Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
—Seneca, philosopher

As every cockroach knows, thriving on poisons is the secret of success.
—Mason Cooley, aphorist

Somewhere along the line, we seem to have confused comfort with happiness.
—Dean Karnazes, ultramarathon runner

The easy, gentle, and sloping path... is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.
—Michel de Montaigne, essayist