Unlocking Our Ability to Do Hard Things
Restructuring our approach to become effortlessly consistent.
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Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.
Bruce Lee
We all know we need to do hard things to get better, yet the very nature of these responsibilities makes executing them difficult and staying consistent seemingly impossible.
Whether it’s personal, professional, or even our hobbies the challenge of consistently doing hard things always weighs on us.
If we don’t have a strategy to get these things done then we won’t be able to progress our lives forward.
It’s a frustrating paradox—wanting to improve but being held back by the very efforts required to achieve that improvement.
Gritting Our Teeth
Our first instinct for tackling these difficult tasks is usually gritting our teeth and soldiering through the discomfort.
We accept that suffering is the only way to make progress.
While this mindset yields short-term results and makes us more resilient, it fails in the long run. Consistency becomes the issue.
The mental toll of constantly forcing ourselves to suffer makes it harder and harder to show up and do the work.
Inevitably our motivation will falter and we abandon our efforts toward becoming better. We’re left stagnant and lose confidence we can make meaningful progress.
Relying solely on gritting our teeth to consistently do hard things will only last as long as our finite and fleeting sense of motivation.
Playing to Win
Despite their difficulty, there are some things we consistently suffer through regardless of our motivation levels.
These are pursuits we want to win. Pursuits where we are competing against ourselves or others that have a clear target or goal.
When we want to win we have a reason to push ourselves and a reason to suffer.
It’s no longer suffering for suffering’s sake, but rather just a step in the process of improving.
When we desperately want to win we see difficulties as opportunities to triumph. We are naturally more consistent when we are driven by a desire to win rather than a sense of obligation.
To stay consistent with hard things that propel us forward, we should carefully choose how we approach the worthwhile pursuits in our lives.
If we choose pursuits we want to win then doing the difficult work to progress forward takes care of itself.
We’re much more likely to show up to the gym if we’re competing with others or chasing a new personal best than if we’re mindlessly exercising with no true objective.
To become a bit better each day we need to consistently do hard things and motivation is an unreliable long-term strategy to get these things done.
We’re better off choosing pursuits that we want to win and structuring our efforts to take advantage of our natural competitiveness and drive to make progress.
Instead of dreading the hard things, we begin to look forward to them, knowing that each hard thing we do is helping us become a bit better.
Prompts
What hard things do you have to do to keep yourself progressing forward?
What strategies do you employ to get these things done? Are they working?
How can you change what you are pursuing or how you are pursuing it to tap into your competitive spirit?
Deep Dive
The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday
Pulling from the teachings of the Stoics, Holiday explores the idea of embracing challenges as the path to success.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.
Kevin