I Am Strong

I used to strive to be happy, but I don’t anymore. I now rather strive to be strong. For happiness is an emotion, and it is unrealistic to depend on an emotion and expect it to last. Even if we don’t expect it to last, we should not make it our goal because at some point we will become overwhelmed with happiness.
Happiness will not help you overcome challenges. You will, however, become happy by overcoming challenges. In order to overcome challenges, one must have strength and resilience.

But how does one gain strength and resilience? The simple answer would be by looking within.

A person is sick and tired of their job, so instead of searching for meaning and a way to overcome the challenge that they perceive to be their job, they search for the solutions externally, usually through materialism

What would we find should we look within? Marcus Aurelius says in his book Meditations “Nowhere you can go is more peaceful than your own soul.” He emphasizes that our own inner power can defeat challenges by turning them into a motive to be driven.

When we feel exhausted with the way our life is turning out to be, how often do we reflect within ourselves? It seems that we often reflect on the externalities, meaning all that is around us, rather than on our own internal struggles.

If we reflect and search within ourselves, we will find strengths which we are blind to when searching externally. For whatever is external is material, and whatever is material cannot be a source of strength.

If the person who is sick and tired of their job search for the answers internally — within themselves — they will find the strengths to help them overcome the challenges within their job. They will soon find themselves coming up with new creative ways at interacting in their job, getting better focused at it, and might even love it