Don't sweat the small stuff.

You know, don't worry that you ate an amazingly healthy breakfast to just eat an entire B&J pint of ice cream before bed. Don't worry that you've gone to the gym every day for a week, to sleep in on Saturday because Friday was just too hard to handle. Don't worry that you just want to watch and entire Netflix series in one day after sending a million emails to a million people the day before. News flash, it's okay to struggle. REALLY.

I'm not saying that eating ice cream or sitting on a couch is "struggling" per-say. The exact definition says that a struggle is when you strive to achieve or attain something in the face of difficulty or resistance. So technically when your goal is to be healthy, eating ice cream is your struggle. But could you imagine a world without ice cream? I sure can't.

The thing about struggles, is if we look at them as a failure, or taking steps backward from our end goal, they can tear us down. They aren't failures. They're a pause, a break, from the toll that reaching for your dreams takes on you. It's impossible to be perfect, but we try anyway. Your struggles give you a chance to be real. Without them, we'd be a world full of fake people doing fake things because we're too afraid to mess up.

They're not always going to be blueberries and paper airplanes (S/O Chad). Sometimes a struggle is going to make you think you have to work twice as hard tomorrow. Example: You missed the gym so now you have to go twice as long tomorrow. DON'T think that way. A struggle is just a hiccup, and sometimes hiccups are annoying and you'll dance while holding your breath to get rid of them, but they go away, and they don't cause you any permanent pain.

So take your struggles with grace. Don't sit and sulk about them, because usually, the more you struggle the more you're reaching for. They can be your photo album you look back on when you've gotten to your final destination. You'll look back and realize without them, you wouldn't be where you are, or who you are. They teach you strength, they teach you patience, and they teach you humility. So please, don't sweat the small stuff.