We often talk about hardship as though it were a chapter we had to survive before the real story could begin. We reference it as “the hard season,” or “the awful year.” In our minds, it becomes the thing we got through.
I think that’s fair – 2009-2010 and 2016-2018 were those hard seasons for me. Some experiences are painful enough that survival is no small feat. But I think we miss something important when we treat hardship only as context or as the unfortunate mess surrounding the meaningful part of the story.
Hardship goes beyond what merely happened to us. In fact, it’s the mechanism of growth. As painful as it is, we do, in fact, learn more from failures than we do from successes. And here’s the key – we’re learning. In the frame of reference, hardship is not just the backstory, but the curriculum.
That shift matters.
Because when we tell hardship as backstory, the emphasis is usually on the event. Here’s what I went through. Here’s what happened. Here’s what life did to me. That version of the story can be honest and important. Sometimes naming the thing is the first brave step. But it is incomplete.
Hardship becomes a teacher when we ask a different set of questions, beyond “what happened?”
What did this experience ask of me?
What did it demand that I become?
What did it strip away?
What did it reveal?
That is where the story deepens.
Beyond the Lesson of Hardship
The difference between hardship as backstory and hardship as teacher is the difference between recounting pain and extracting meaning from it. One says, “Here’s what I endured.” The other says, “Here’s what this experience taught me, cost me, and clarified for me.”
That is not toxic positivity. It is not pretending every hardship arrives bearing muffins and a life lesson. It most certainly is not “everything happens for a reason” (I honestly wish that phrase would die out in a freezing desert somewhere). Some hardship is senseless or brutal. It can leave scars we would never have volunteered for.
But even then, hardship often teaches.
It teaches us where we are fragile or where we are stronger than we thought.
It teaches us what matters and what doesn’t.
It teaches us the cost of denial, avoidance, pride, perfectionism, silence, to name a few.
It teaches us who we can trust (including ourselves).
It teaches us what we need to grieve and what we need to let go.
The last one stings. Letting go is very, very hard. And I’m not just talking about letting go of the current circumstance. Sometimes letting go is letting go of a dream or a vision that we realize can’t or won’t come to pass. It mourns a future we won’t have or a person we won’t become. That could be a title at work, it could be a physical accomplishment we realize our bodies aren’t able to manage, or even a role, like a parent.
And sometimes, most inconveniently, it teaches us that the life we were living no longer fits. In some moments, we realize we’ve lost sight of ourselves, or we can’t recognize who we’ve become. We are no longer authentically ourselves.
Some hardships do not return us to our former selves. They alter us, form us using different molds, burn off some of our illusions, and rearrange our priorities. They expose the relationships, habits, identities, or assumptions that can no longer come with us as we rise out of the fire.
Resilience helps us endure the fire.
Transformation is what happens when we come out different on the other side.
Hardship is often the crucible between the two.
This crucible is where we discover whether we are simply rebuilding the old life, or whether we are being invited into a new one.
That matters deeply for everyone, but specifically for leaders.
When people around us are struggling, our instinct is often to help them survive it. We solve the problem, steady the ship, reduce the pain. And there is goodness in that. People need support, protection, resources, and care.
But leadership also asks us to help people make meaning.
We have to be careful on timing. Meaning is easier to glean when we’ve got a few miles between us and what we just experienced. And how we approach it is equally important. We’re not going to foster this conversation in some preachy, silver-lining way that makes people want to throw a stapler. But in the right moment, thoughtful leaders help others move from mere survival toward reflection.
They ask better questions.
What is this experience teaching you?
What has it cost you?
What has it clarified?
What do you know now that you did not know before?
What are you no longer willing to ignore?
Who are you becoming because of this?
Those are powerful questions because they restore agency. They help people become interpreters of their own lives rather than just reporters of their pain.
Learn. Burn. Return.
One of my peers, Rick Schleufer, taught me this beautiful model to overcome hardship: Learn. Burn. Return. You learn from your mistakes, challenges, or hardship. And then you burn it. Some of us have the tendency to marinate in it, ask questions that stretch from reflective to more mentally punishing. I’d encourage you to draw that line for yourself and learn before leaning over the line into shame. Burn it. And then get back to your life.
Helping people with hardship may be one of the most important forms of leadership there is. I know it’s some of the most powerful work that I do with people.
My job is not to help people deny hardship, decorate it, or rush past it. One of the greatest gifts I give my members and clients is to help them listen to it, sit in it, and learn from it.
Hardship is beyond something we just get through. It’s the very thing that shapes and molds us, and when we frame it beyond backstory, it becomes an incredibly powerful teacher.