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Robert Frost - "The only way out is through." · the Daily Quote - Positive Daily Inspiration and Motivational Quote of the Day

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  Dot com. Welcome to the Daily Quote, the
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  podcast designed to kick start your day in a positive way.
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  I'm our host, Andrew McGivern, and this episode is brought to
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  you by the Great News Podcast because good news should be
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  heard. And the link is in the show
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  notes. Today's quote comes from Robert
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  Frost, four time Pulitzer Prize winner, one of the most beloved
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  poets in American history, and a man whose personal life was
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  marked by a degree of loss and grief that most of us will never
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  be asked to carry. He outlived four of his six
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  children, He watched his wife die of cancer, He committed his
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  sister to a mental institution, and he battled depression his
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  entire life. He wrote from inside all this
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  difficulty, not around it, through it.
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  And from that place he gave us this six word quote, which is
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  paraphrased from his 1914 poem A Servant to Servants.
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  He once wrote. The only way out is through.
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  No comfort, no shortcut, no promise that it won't hurt.
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  Just the plainest, most honest truth about how human beings
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  survive hard things. You go through them, think about
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  what the alternative actually looks like.
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  Avoidance. The refusal to face what needs
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  to be faced. It might work briefly.
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  The grief gets pushed down. The difficult conversation gets
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  postponed. The painful truth gets ignored.
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  The hard season gets numbed, distracted, deferred, and for a
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  while the pressure eases. But avoidance doesn't end the
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  thing. It suspends it.
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  The grief that isn't grieved doesn't disappear.
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  It calcifies. The conversation that isn't had
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  doesn't resolve. It festers.
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  The problem that isn't faced doesn't shrink.
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  It waits and grows. And at some point, often at the
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  worst possible moment, what was avoided comes back heavier,
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  harder and more demanding than it would have been if you'd gone
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  through it when it first arrived.
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  Frost understood this not as a philosophical position, but as a
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  lived reality. He lost his father at 11 years
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  old, leaving the family with almost nothing.
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  He watched his son Carol die by suicide, his daughter Marjorie
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  die after childbirth. His first son, Elliot, died of
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  cholera as a child. He could not go around any of
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  this. The only path forward was
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  through, through the grief, through the Depression, through
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  the loss, through the next morning and the one after that.
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  And he kept writing. He became one of the most highly
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  honored American poets of the 20th century, not in spite of
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  what he went through, because going through it made him who he
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  became. And sometimes it isn't a death
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  or a major life set back that you need to get through.
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  Sometimes it is just the work that needs to be done to achieve
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  what you want. Seth Godin calls this process
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  the dip. When you have a goal or a new
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  business or a new podcast or blog or whatever it is and you
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  are excited at first, but then the work gets harder and the
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  initial motivation starts to fade.
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  This is where a lot of people quit and give up on their dream
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  or their goal. But Seth Godin says push through
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  the dip and it'll be easier on the other side.
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  On the other side, you are stronger and a better version of
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  yourself and the thing you're building might gain momentum.
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  That's not a promise that the going through it won't cost you
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  something. It will.
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  Going through always does, but there is something on the other
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  side of through that staying put or quitting never reaches.
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  You don't get that by staying put, you don't get it by trying
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  to avoid it, only by going through.
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  So here's the question, what are you currently trying to avoid?
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  A tough situation, pain, loss, an identity crisis, or just
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  getting through the hard work at building something.
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  Because Robert Frost is not offering you easy comfort here.
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  He's offering you something better.
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  An honest map on how to get out. The path exists.
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  It goes through the middle of the hard thing, not around the
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  edges of it, and not by camping out in the hard place
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  indefinitely. You don't have to be ready.
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  You don't have to be brave, you just have to keep moving.
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  The only way out is through. That's it for today.
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  I'm Anna McGivern, signing off for now, but I'll be back
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  tomorrow. Same pod time, same pod station
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  with another daily quote.