Whether you are your own boss or you work for someone else, you’ve probably faced some ‘rough patches’ from time to time where things didn’t turn out quite like you had expected or you went toe to toe with a challenging problem.

Some were probably minor, others a bit more serious, but if you look carefully, you’ll find that virtually all of them helped you in one unexpected way or another.

How could struggle possibly help you?

There’s an old legend about a little boy who was playing in the garden and found a caterpillar crawling in a nearby tree. He picked it up and took it inside to show his mother.

The boy was so excited, that he asked his mother if he could keep his new “pet.” The mother was a little perplexed, but said he could keep it if he took really good care of it.

The boy kept the caterpillar in a large jar. He gave it some leaves to eat and a few little sticks to climb. Each day he would bring more leaves and spent hours watching the caterpillar chow them down.

One day, the caterpillar climbed up one of the sticks and started hanging upside down from it. They boy was worried and asked his mother what was happening. The mother explained that the caterpillar was creating a cocoon and soon would change into a beautiful butterfly.

The boy was excited to learn about all the changes that his caterpillar was going through. Each day he would watch and wait for the butterfly to come out.

One day, he noticed that a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly started to come out. But the hole was too small and it was a real struggle for the butterfly to fit through that tiny little hole.

Soon, the boy became concerned. His butterfly was struggling so hard and making so little progress. He worried that the butterfly would get stuck, give up, and die.

The little boy was so worried, that he decided to help. He got a sharp knife from the kitchen and used it to make the hole a little bit bigger. With his help, the butterfly quickly emerged from the cocoon with little struggle.

However, the boy noticed that the butterfly was very swollen and had tiny shriveled wings. He waited and waited for the wings to expand so the butterfly could take off and fly, but it never happened.

The mother took the boy to a wise man from the village who explained that the hole in the cocoon was too small on purpose… the butterfly was supposed to struggle to come out of its cocoon. He said that all that struggle pushes the fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings.

Without the struggle, the fluid was stuck in its body. The butterfly would spend the rest of its life with tiny, shriveled wings and would never be able to fly.

I have mixed feelings about this story because it makes it seem like struggle is necessary. Unlike butterflies emerging from their cocoons, I don’t believe that people need to struggle in order to be successful.

In fact, most successful people take advantage of their inner strengths and talents to do things they are naturally good at and that come fairly easily to them. Often they are so good, they make it seem effortless.

Does that mean they never struggle? Of course not! But it does mean that they struggle a lot less than those who are not leveraging their natural talents and strengths.

At the same time, struggle does have hidden benefits. It helps you learn, it helps you grow, and it develops persistence and flexibility. It may sound like an old cliche, but  struggle does build character.

The key is to recognize the difference between positive struggle that challenges you and makes you stronger, and needless struggle that is keeping you trapped and leading you nowhere.

Whenever you face struggles or challenges, as most people always do, look at it as an opportunity to grow rather than just a waste of time.

Here are some practical tips to help you get the most from difficult experiences. You’ll often find that changing your perspective just a little bit is enough to turn things around.

1) Learning experience. It helps if you view every difficulty and failure as a potential learning experience, even if the ultimate lesson is that you need to start playing to your strengths and trying something else.

2) A difficult situation helps you grow. By problem solving and gaining new knowledge, you strengthen your character and expand your expertise.

3) Be positive. Just because you struggled doesn’t mean that the outcome is always negative. Maintain a positive attitude throughout your situation. This helps you make good decisions and will also keep your stress levels under control.

4) Become stronger. Use each new life experience to better equip yourself for whatever the future holds.

5) Perspective. Sometimes, your ability to handle difficulties is all a matter of perspective. Try to put your situation in perspective by comparing it to things you’ve gone through in the past.

Sometimes, it also helps to think of a “worst case scenario”. Realizing how things could have turned out much worse can quickly shift your perspective.

6) Know when to let go. Constant struggle could be a sign that you are using a poor strategy to pursue your goals. Take a step back and see if there is a better, easier, or simpler way to accomplish your objective.

Don’t keep banging your head against the wall!

Taking this a step further, sometimes you just need to let go of this particular outcome and open yourself up to other possibilities. This doesn’t mean you need to give up on your ultimate goal, but it may mean that you need to find another way to get there.

Sometimes it’s better to find a way around an obstacle rather than trying to force your way through it.