The Struggle Trap - Essay No. 2
The struggle mentality runs deep in many of us, so deep that we rarely stop to question it. For many, it has become a self-evident starting point for how life works. That if you want to get somewhere, if you want to achieve something, if you want to be worthy of anything at all, then it has to be hard, it has to be exhausting, and it has to cost blood, sweat, and tears. Those words have almost become sacred, as if suffering itself were proof of seriousness, and exhaustion a receipt showing that you truly gave everything you had.
The struggle trap is built on the idea that the only way forward in the world is through fight. That you must fight for relationships, fight for work, fight for your body, fight to be enough. That you have to train extremely hard for it to count, work relentlessly to deserve success, and sacrifice yourself for it to be real. And when something comes more easily, when something unfolds with less resistance, it is often met with suspicion, as if it does not really count, as if it were shallow, careless, or somehow dishonest.
There is an unspoken hierarchy embedded here, where the one who has struggled the most, suffered the longest, and endured the strongest headwinds is also seen as the most deserving of respect. The more you have worn yourself down, the greater the reward, at least within the story we have learned to live by. This is where the trap begins to tighten.
Hustle. Grind. Struggle. Wake up early. Work late. Rest is for cowards. Recovery is for the weak. In certain circles there is an almost open contempt for ease, playfulness, and softness. Those who do not live this way are perceived as unserious, as if they do not take life seriously, as if they are unwilling to pay the price.
This is not merely an individual pattern; it is a culture that permeates working life, entrepreneurship, performance, training, and relationships. In many environments, the struggle mentality is not only accepted, it is celebrated. It is framed as strength, discipline, and character, and those who question it risk being pushed to the margins.
I would call it an extreme imbalance.
At its core, the struggle mentality is strongly colored by masculine energy, not in terms of gender, but in terms of principle. Drive, direction, performance, and conquest. There is nothing inherently wrong with these qualities. The problem arises when they dominate entirely, when they are no longer balanced by the feminine, by playfulness, receptivity, creativity, rest, and joy. That is when it becomes exhausting. That is when people burn out, both women and men, because no human being is built to live in constant battle. Even the most hardened individual, the one who naturally thrives on discipline, toughness, and fight, will eventually be emptied by this way of living. Life requires balance, and struggle is not balance. At the same time, pure ease without structure does not work either. To simply float, create, and play without direction, responsibility, or framework does not lead to wholeness. It is not an either-or. It is precisely in the middle, at the center of the pendulum, that most people actually feel well, where effort and ease can coexist, where strength no longer needs to prove itself through suffering.
What has become increasingly clear to me in recent years is that the opposite of struggle is not passivity, but receptivity. When I stepped into an entirely different way of seeing life, where what feels light is also allowed to be right, something fundamental shifted. Where it feels joyful, I go. Where there is a natural movement, I follow it. And what is remarkable is that when I live this way, I reach goals both faster and more precisely than when I forced my way forward. It is as if things begin to come to me instead of me constantly having to chase them.
Struggle culture is built on the idea of being a hunter. You are supposed to hunt opportunities, results, success, validation, and the next step. You must stay ahead, control, push, and drive. Everything is held together by control, and control creates a form of contraction, not just struggle, but cramp. The more one tries to control life, the more contracted it becomes, and the more the flow is restricted. The paradox is that people living in struggle often believe they feel better the more they control, when in reality the opposite is true.
When one instead lives from ease, not as laziness but as trust, something else happens. Responsibility is not abandoned, but the contraction and the fight are released. Trust in the process deepens, and there is less need to steer every step, because one begins to notice that things resolve themselves in ways that could never have been calculated in advance. Synchronicity appears. Timing aligns. And it becomes clear that struggle was an unnecessary detour rather than a requirement.
This is an entirely different way of living. It is calmer, more joyful, and richer, because it does not demand years of struggle in order to earn results. You do not have to bleed to be worthy. You do not have to attend the so-called “school of hard knocks” for life to be taken seriously. The very expression, the school of hard knocks, is revealing. For many, it becomes an identity, almost a refuge, a way of legitimizing suffering and holding onto a self-image in which one does not cheat, in which one does things the right way.
And yes, sometimes one may need to go through hardship to understand that it is not necessary. That was true for me. But struggle is not a life state. It is a survival mode. And there is a decisive difference between surviving and living.
This is also where performance takes on a different meaning. Performance in itself does not have to be stressful. It is only when it is tied to struggle, control, and self-erasure that it becomes so. Performance that arises from ease, presence, and genuine interest does not carry the same pressure. It does not consume the body and psyche in the same way, and it does not build identity around suffering, but around participation. Perhaps this is why the struggle trap is so difficult to leave. Because it is not just a behavior; it is often an identity. Many people simply do not know who they would be without it. And like all the traps explored in this book, this one too requires a willingness to question who we believe ourselves to be, and to let go of a self-image that may once have been necessary, but is no longer true.
For me, this attitude became especially visible in environments where struggle mentality was strongly normative, such as in the world of entrepreneurship, where it is often idealized to erase oneself for the sake of the company. Or in triathlon culture, where one is expected to train harder, longer, faster, until the body can no longer keep up, and where exhaustion almost becomes a badge of honor. I have never truly felt at home in those environments, yet I have been part of them, and each time I chose a different path, each time I refused to live that way, there was an underlying sense that I was not taking my role seriously. That I was not a real athlete. That I was not a true entrepreneur.
But my path was different. When I practiced triathlon, it was playful. Not unstructured, not careless, but playful. There was structure, goals, and discipline, but also space for joy, curiosity, and ease. And precisely because of that, it worked. I reached far, not despite the playfulness, but because of it. I see the same pattern in life at large. When we stop believing that struggle is proof of value, when we release the idea that it has to hurt in order to count, the entire foundation shifts. Not because we stop making effort, but because effort no longer carries identity. It becomes a tool rather than a self-definition.
The struggle trap convinces us that life must be a battle in order to be real. But this is a misunderstanding that costs us more than we realize. Depth does not come from struggle, but from presence. Meaning does not come from suffering, but from our relationship to what is. And wholeness is not achieved by emptying ourselves, but by living in a rhythm that actually supports us. Stepping out of the struggle trap is therefore not about becoming lazy, passive, or disengaged. It is about stopping the sacrifice of oneself to an idea that is no longer true. About allowing strength and ease to coexist. About understanding that a life that does not constantly resist can still be deep, serious, and meaningful. Perhaps it is only when we stop struggling with life that life finally begins to carry us.