When Life Feels Hard, Keep Going

I’ve mentioned before that I went to a Jesuit high school.

If you don’t know much about Jesuits, they were founded by St Ignatius of Loyola. I don’t remember most of the theology, and I’m definitely not a scholar on any of it. But there’s one thing from a retreat that stuck with me.

One of the priests talked about something Ignatius called desolation. Basically, those stretches where you feel off, unmotivated, frustrated, or just not like yourself. Nothing is technically broken, but everything feels harder than it should. And Ignatius’ advice was simple and honestly pretty smart: when you’re in desolation, don’t make big changes.

That’s been useful for me. When you’re tired or burned out, it’s easy to convince yourself that the problem is the job, the business, the plan, or the whole direction of your life. That’s usually when people quit things they shouldn’t quit or blow up situations that just needed a little time and rest.

What I’ve learned is that not every rough season means something is wrong. Sometimes you’re just in a rough season. Desolation is a terrible time to make decisions, but it’s a decent time to slow down, get some perspective, and stop doing anything drastic. More often than not, if you wait it out, your clarity comes back…and you’re glad you didn’t torch everything in the meantime.