STRUGGLE
By Napoleon Hill

The necessity for struggle is one of the clever devices through which nature forces individuals to expand, develop, progress, and become strong through resistance. Struggle can, and does, become either an ordeal or a magnificent experience through which the individual expresses gratitude for the opportunity to conquer the cause of his struggle.

Life, from birth until death, is literally an unbroken record of an ever increasing variety of struggles, which no individual can avoid.

Mastery of ignorance calls for struggle. Education involves eternal struggle, and every day is commencement day because education is cumulative. It is a lifetime job.

Maintenance of sound physical health calls for eternal struggle with the multifarious enemies of sound health; struggle for food and shelter; struggle for an opportunity to earn a living; struggle to hold a job; struggle to gain recognition in a profession; struggle to keep a business out of bankruptcy.

Look in whatever direction we may, and we find that there is hardly a circumstance of daily life which does not call for individual struggle in order to survive.

We are forced to recognize that this great universal necessity for struggle must have a definite and useful purpose. That purpose is to force the individual to sharpen his/her wits, arouse his/her enthusiasm, build up his/her spirit of Faith, gain definiteness of purpose, develop his/her power of will, inspire his/her faculty of imagination to give him/her new uses for old ideas and concepts, and thereby fulfill some unknown mission for which he may have been born.

Struggle keeps people from going to sleep with self-satisfaction or laziness, and forces him/her onward and upward in the fulfillment of his/her mission of life, and he/she thereby makes his/her individual contribution to whatever may be the Universal Purpose of mankind on earth.

Strength, both physical and spiritual, is the product of struggle!

"Do the thing," said Emerson, "and you shall have the power."

Meet struggle and master it, says nature, and you shall have strength and wisdom sufficient for all your needs.

If you wish a strong arm, says nature, give it systematic use under the weight of a three-pound hammer and soon you will have muscles like bands of steel. If you do not wish a strong arm, says nature, tie it in a sling, take it out of use, and remove the cause for struggle, and its strength will wither and die. In every form of life, atrophy and death come from idleness!

There may be some pain in most forms of struggle, but nature compensates the individual for the pain in the form of power and strength and wisdom which comes from practical experience.

While organizing the Science of Success philosophy, I made the revealing discovery that all the more successful leaders, in every calling, in every profession, and every walk of life, had gained their leadership in almost exact ratio to the extent of their struggles in the attainment of their leadership.

I observed, with profound interest, that no man, who had not been thoroughly tested by the necessity of struggle, seemed ever to have been chosen as a leader in times of great crises during the interim between the stone age and our present day civilization.

Careful study of the entire record of civilization itself, from the age of the cave man to the present, shows clearly that it is the product of eternal struggle.

For twenty odd years I was forced to struggle, in mastering the problems incidental to my work in organizing the world's first practical philosophy of success. First, I was forced to struggle in preparing myself with the necessary knowledge to produce the philosophy. Secondly, I was forced to struggle to maintain myself economically while doing the research necessary to organize the philosophy. Then I met with still greater necessity to struggle while gaining recognition from the world for myself and the philosophy.

Twenty years of struggle without any direct financial compensation is an experience not calculated to give one sustained hope, but it was the price I had to pay for a philosophy which was destined to benefit untold numbers of people, many of whom were not born when I began my work.

Discouraging? Heartbreaking? Not at all, for I recognized from the beginning that out of my struggle would come triumph and victory in proportion to the labors invested in my task. In this hope I have not been disappointed, but I have been overwhelmed with the bountiful manner in which the world has responded and paid me tribute for the long years of struggle that went into my work.

Also, I have gained from my struggle something of still greater and more profound value. It is recognition that through my struggles I have reached deeply into the spiritual wells of my soul, and there I have found powers available for every purpose I may desire - powers I never knew I possessed, and never would have discovered except by the means of struggle!

From my experiences with struggle I discovered that the Creator never singles out an individual for an important service to mankind without first testing him, through struggle, in proportion to the nature of the service he is to render. Thus, through struggle, I learned to interpret the laws, purposes, and working plans of the Creator as they related to me and to mankind in general.

What greater benefits could anyone desire from struggle?

What greater rewards could anyone gain from any other cause?

Courtesy of Ballantine Books
Excerpted from "You Can Work Your Own Miracles" by Napoleon Hill