TRADING & DEVELOPMENT | OCTOBER 16, 2026

Hardship isn't evidence that you're on the wrong path.

David killed Goliath.

Then his problems got worse.

Before Goliath, David had already been anointed by Samuel. God had rejected Saul as king and chosen David.

David didn't campaign for the throne.

He didn't decide that becoming king was his next big goal.

God positioned him for it.

Then came Goliath.

David stepped forward when others would not.

He defeated him.

He won.

People celebrated.

His name spread.

And you might expect that moment to be the beginning of everything becoming easier.

Instead, Saul became jealous.

Then afraid.

Eventually, Saul wanted David dead.

David went from celebrated victory to having spears thrown at him.

From serving the king to fleeing from him.

From public acclaim to hiding in the wilderness.

Imagine what it must have been like to stand in that season.

David could have asked:

God, I did what you positioned me to do. Why is my life getting harder?

That's what makes David's story so powerful to me.

The circumstances became harder.

But that didn't mean God had changed His mind about David.

There's an important difference between deciding you want something and believing God has positioned you for something.

David didn't spend the wilderness deciding whether he still wanted to become king.

He hadn't chosen the throne in the first place.

God had.

That changes the question.

The wilderness wasn't a referendum on whether the destination was still worth it.

David had to figure out how to navigate what stood between where he was and where God had positioned him to go.

And there were real problems to solve.

David fled when he needed to flee.

He hid when he needed to hide.

He sought refuge.

He moved when Saul pursued him.

He gathered people around him.

He made decisions with incomplete information.

He even had opportunities to kill Saul and refused to force the outcome by taking Saul's life.

David wasn't passive in the wilderness.

He learned how to navigate it.

The hardship required something from him.

But the hardship itself wasn't proof that God's positioning had been wrong.

I've spent more than 15 years coaching and mentoring people in different areas of personal development.

And I've watched some version of this happen over and over again.

Someone makes a serious decision to change their life.

They commit.

They start moving.

And instead of everything getting easier, they discover how difficult meaningful change actually is.

There's sacrifice.

Uncertainty.

Frustration.

Failure.

Self-doubt.

They become aware of weaknesses they didn't realize they had.

Sometimes they feel farther from the destination than they did before they started.

And eventually, the difficulty starts telling them a story:

Maybe I made the wrong decision.

Maybe I'm not capable of this.

Maybe this isn't working.

Maybe I should go back.

That's where I think we can make a dangerous mistake.

We allow the hardship to become a verdict.

When you're called toward something you aren't yet equipped to carry, there's going to be a gap.

A gap between:

WHO I AM TODAY

and

WHO I HAVE TO BECOME TO CARRY WHAT I'VE BEEN CALLED TO CARRY.

Making the decision doesn't eliminate that gap.

Sometimes it exposes it.

You discover that your discipline isn't where it needs to be.

That you don't handle uncertainty as well as you thought.

That failure affects you more deeply than you expected.

That there are behaviors you need to change.

Skills you need to develop.

Fears you need to confront.

Problems you don't yet know how to solve.

That realization can feel like you're moving backward.

But sometimes beginning the right journey is exactly what reveals how much development the journey is going to require.

And this is where hardship can become useful.

Not because hardship is automatically good.

Not because suffering proves you're destined for something great.

And not because every difficult thing in your life should be endured forever.

Hardship presents problems.

And problems require you to respond.

What is this exposing?

What do I need to learn?

What weakness keeps showing up?

What capability don't I have yet?

What needs to change in me?

How do I navigate this without abandoning the purpose?

That's different from asking:

This is hard. Should I quit?

I know what it feels like to ask that question.

There was a period in my trading development when I genuinely wanted to quit.

Not because I had one bad week.

The difficulty had lasted long enough that I was beginning to question whether what I was pursuing was even attainable.

Maybe becoming a professional-level trader was far-fetched.

Maybe full-time trading wasn't realistic for me.

Maybe I had spent all this time pursuing something I wasn't actually capable of doing.

At some point, continuing no longer felt obviously rational or encouraging.

And during that season, my wife told me something I still carry with me:

“God is not going to put you on a path that you're not built for.”

I needed that.

Not because those words suddenly made me profitable.

They didn't solve my execution problems.

They didn't remove the weaknesses I still needed to confront.

They didn't make trading easier.

They changed what I believed the difficulty meant.

I had begun interpreting the hardship as evidence against the path.

She reminded me why I believed I was on the path in the first place.

Then I still had to solve the problems.

Looking backward, I can see things I couldn't possibly see while I was standing inside that season.

At the time, I could see my own frustration.

My own failures.

My own doubts.

The problems immediately in front of me.

I couldn't see what continuing would eventually affect.

Had I quit, I wouldn't simply have abandoned a personal goal.

I would have walked away from a path that would eventually shape who I became.

It affected my family.

It eventually put me in a position to coach and mentor other traders.

I've watched people change their behavior.

Develop discipline.

Handle failure differently.

Become more capable.

And those changes don't necessarily stop with them.

They have families too.

Their decisions affect other people.

Their development affects other people.

I'm not saying that to make myself the hero of the story.

I'm saying it because I couldn't see any of it from where I was standing.

All I could see was the wilderness.

That's part of what makes difficult seasons so dangerous.

We make conclusions about the entire story while we're standing inside one chapter of it.

There's an important guardrail here.

I'm not saying every goal you've ever wanted is God's will for your life.

I'm not saying every hard path is the correct path.

And I'm not saying you should never quit anything.

There's a difference between stubbornly refusing to acknowledge reality and remaining faithful to something you genuinely believe you've been positioned to do.

You still need wisdom.

You still need honest evaluation.

Sometimes your strategy needs to change.

Sometimes your approach needs to change.

Sometimes the hardship is exposing a mistake you need to correct.

But that's exactly the point.

Hardship requires you to problem-solve.

It doesn't automatically require you to abandon the purpose.

If you believe you've been positioned for something, difficulty should make you ask better questions.

Not simply:

Is this too hard?

But:

What is this requiring from me?

What do I need to learn?

What needs to change?

What's the problem in front of me, and how do I solve it?

That's development.

David killed Goliath.

Then his problems got worse.

But David hadn't chosen the throne.

God had chosen David.

So the wilderness wasn't a referendum on whether David still wanted the destination.

It was terrain he had to learn to navigate.

He had problems to solve.

Decisions to make.

Weaknesses to confront.

Years he couldn't skip.

And none of that meant God had changed His mind about where He had positioned him.

The reader gets something David didn't have while living through each uncertain day.

We get to turn the page.

We know the wilderness wasn't the end of his story.

The wilderness wasn't proof that David had lost God's favor.

It was part of the road to the throne.

You may be standing inside a chapter right now that makes very little sense from where you are.

And if you genuinely believe God has positioned you on that path, don't let difficulty alone rewrite what you believe about why you're there.

Solve the problem in front of you.

Learn what the season requires you to learn.

Become who the purpose requires you to become.

And be very careful what you allow a hard season to convince you of.

— Theo
Founder, Tribe Trades