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Embrace the Struggle
What It’s About
An unflinching meditation on the role of difficulty in human growth. James Allen, the author of As a Man Thinketh, argues struggle isn't an obstacle to a good life, it's the path to one. Short, lyrical, and deeply Stoic in spirit. The kind of book to keep on the desk and reread when life pushes hard.
Three Key Ideas
Struggle as the Path Forward
Setbacks are not interruptions to a well-ordered life but the texture of being alive, and embracing them rather than fighting them is what makes progress possible.
Availability Over Ability
When the skills that built your identity stop working, what remains and still matters is your willingness to show up, be present, and keep offering what is underneath the performance.
Acceptance Is Not Surrender
Accepting a hard fact and continuing to work toward recovery are not in conflict, sorting what is changeable from what is fixed is where useful effort begins.
Read a Sample
Embrace the Struggle: Living Life on Life's Terms
By Zig Ziglar with Julie Ziglar Norman (2009)
Opening hook
It was after 10 p.m. on March 7, 2007, when Zig Ziglar got out of bed in his home in Plano, Texas, to write down an idea. In twenty-two years in that house, he'd walked from his bedroom across the upstairs hall to his office thousands of times. He never turned on a light, because he didn't want to wake his wife Jean, the woman he calls the Redhead. That night, his left foot came down where the floor ended and the staircase began.
He fell down sixteen marble steps. His head hit the floor at the bottom and then slammed into the front door, and he was out cold for several minutes. His wife called 911, and the paramedics came. At the hospital, doctors found two brain bleeds. He hadn't broken any bones, but he had vertigo and a brain injury that left his short-term memory, in his words, very, very short.
Who It’s For
- Anyone who is caring for an aging or ill family member and needs honest, unsentimental company in that role.
- Anyone who has had a career setback, health crisis, or identity loss and is searching for a way to keep going with what remains.
- Anyone who wants a faith-based book on suffering that names the physical and emotional costs plainly rather than papering over them.
- Anyone who is watching a parent or mentor decline and wants a framework for grieving someone still alive.
About the Author: James Allen
Zig Ziglar (1926 to 2012) grew up in Mississippi, the son of a father who died when Zig was five. His mother raised eleven children through the Depression. He began his career selling cookware door to door and eventually built one of the most recognized names in American motivational speaking and sales training. His 1975 book See You at the Top sold millions of copies. Over five decades he wrote more than twenty books, shared stages with five US presidents, and developed a following in Christian self-help writing after his conversion in middle age.
Julie Ziglar Norman, his youngest daughter and coauthor, had edited her father's books for sixteen years before a fall in 2007 changed his capacity to work alone. She is also a speaker and writer, and her own long-term sobriety from alcoholism, which her parents did not know about until she was already sober, informs her voice throughout this book.
