Money can buy you a lot of knowledge.

Books, university tuition, online courses, coaching and consulting can all help you level up your expertise, add to your knowledge of almost any topic you can imagine and, almost always, cost money.

There’s a lot to be said for the type of knowledge that can be bought. It’s often tactical, useful and laid out in such a way that makes it easy to understand and process.

You might choose to learn about effective communication techniques, marketing strategy, team culture building, or a step by step guide of how to use podcasting to elevate your authority in your space. This type of education is essential to leveling up and improving yourself, your work, and your business.

But this type of education can only get so far before you top out.

There’s another type of education, one that can’t be bought, and can only be earned, painfully, but is required if you want to achieve your potential and create work at the level you’re truly capable of.

This is emotional education.

Emotional education comes from facing down The Hard Stuff along the journey and coming up short. From putting your heart and soul and everything you believe into creating something that fails.

It consists of vulnerability and shame and hopelessness and a profound loss of faith that you have what it takes to make the change you are seeking to make, to connect meaningfully with the people you are seeking to serve.

These lessons will test you like you’ve never been tested and expose you to the world at your most raw. It’s no wonder that many in this situation choose to pack it in, cutting the lesson short to avoid the discomfort, fear, and pain.

But while a course in emotional education might take you to your lowest, if you can summon the courage, strength and resolve to push through and come out the other side, you’ll have earned a lesson that is exceedingly rare.

To face down shame, judgment, and hopelessness, to encountered yourself at your lowest, but continue onward is to move a step closer to creative invincibility.

When you poured everything you had into your work the first time around, you didn’t know the abyss that lay on the other side should you come up short. But knowing that abyss, having ventured through it, and choosing to pick yourself up and create again knowing that you very well might find yourself back there again by doing so?

This is the bravest of creative acts.

No book, class or instructor can teach you this courage. A wise mentor may encourage you to start and continue down the path, but in the end you must be the one to do the work, take the leap and reap both the rewards and consequences.

You may have achieved success without facing down The Hard Stuff, without journeying through the abyss. But if so, it’s likely you haven’t tapped into your deepest potential, and unlocked your greatest ability to make work that means something.

If you’re in the abyss now, keep moving, pushing, creating, even when it feels pointless. Your abyss might take months, years, or decades to work through, but the strength you’ll find on the other side is equal to the trial.

The abyss is the only place to find the strength required to come back and create something that truly matters. The greatest mistake you can make is to avoid it.

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