The faster you swim, the more you experience water resistance. The faster you bike, the higher the wind resistance. The heavier the weight you deadlift, the more the earth push up at your feet. The higher your training or even life-goals are, the more tests and trials you will experience.
Tests and trials come in different waves, and different strengths, depending on your capacity, determination, and the quality of your activities in life.
As martial artists, we need to make sure that we don’t unnecessarily bring these tests and trials on ourselves. If you consciously make bad decisions during your daily or nightly activities, then you should not whine or wonder why bad things are coming your way. This is the grief that you yourself are brining on yourself.
There are also other kinds of tests and trials that come your way but you are not responsible for them. These kinds of difficulties are purposefully sent to you for your own inner progress, and you should be thankful for them, because they are meant to reorient your perception of reality, deepen your inner vision, develop and awaken certain inner qualities which have been dormant in you, help detach yourself from ephemeral things and realize your own previously conceived, erroneous conclusions about life. Without these tests and trials, progress would be impossible. They are also meant for you to weigh in how serious you are about your training or life goals.
My point is, do not allow the necessary difficulties in life derail your training and goals. In fact, you should expect and welcome them in your life as long as you are not directly causing them. The difficulties you experience should be viewed as blessings, though, to outward eyes your life may appear to be in a dismal state of affairs. Far from depressing you, they should make you more energized and focused in training. You are meant to overcome all your life-difficulties, and not choke every time something gets in the way of your life. Training should be viewed as an objective tool to smash those difficulties, and prove to yourself that whatever weaknesses you are experiencing at the moment, they have no influence over you other than awakening your inner being to better and loftier things in life. During this process, a certain measure of your weaknesses and imperfections must get destroyed for good. Once this is accomplished, you should eagerly expect a new and even a stronger difficulty come your way. This life, no matter who you are, will always push you into no battles that you are meant to overcome; and only through overcoming them is when you can claim that you have earned the seat of progress. If it wasn’t for test and trials, any mouse could claim to be the lion.
Such a worldview does not allow tough times to bring you down. It does not allow you to harbor self-pity or get distracted from your training goals. With such a mental state, you become more and more an optimistic, hopeful, and resilient martial artist.
Keep up with your training!