In defense of Hard.
Hello dear readers!
Today I’m going to share an sort of informal essay on why you should do hard things.
My coach has been challenging me more recently with the idea of “Why does it have to be hard?” and “What if this could be easier?” As well as “Why is it so important that you prove to yourself that it was hard?” Thus was born this essay.
First and foremost the term “hard” is rather nebulous and could have many possible interpretations. Further, it’s going to be subjective to each person’s unique life experience, skills, fears, physiology, psychology, etc. So let’s take just a moment to define HARD. (We’re going to go ahead and capitalize Hard in this essay because we’re talking about the broad concept and idea of Hard, almost like it has taken on a life of it’s own, not the humble little adjective or adverb hard.)
Oxford dictionary defines hard as adj : done with a great deal of force or strength; adv : with a great deal of force or effort.
The Tiffani definition, or the way that I think about the term hard in my mind is more along these lines: something that is challenging and engaging; something not easily accomplished, something difficult to complete, navigate through, or obtain the end result of.
So when I talk about something being Hard, it’s not simply a matter of brute strength and effort. There are also the mental and emotional components as well.
I think that Hard gets a bad rap. “Don’t make things harder than they have to be. I want this to be as easy as possible. It’s too hard, I don’t want to do it.” etc. In my humble opinion Hard is not bad, nor should it be villainized.
From a strictly physiological standpoint, our bodies respond to forces placed upon them, both muscles and bones. As an example, if we don’t perform resistance training our bones will lose density and can become brittle. Resistance training is, by definition, using strength, force, and effort. It’s work. If done correctly, it should be hard work. If we do not engage in resistance training we become deconditioned and frail as we age. Even our brain health is dependent on doing things outside of our comfort zone. Our Anterior Midcingulate Cortex (aMCC) is responsible for higher level brain functions like error detection, motivation, decision-making, impulse control, attention allocation, and modulation of emotional responses. This part of our brain grows and becomes more efficient at helping us manager those higher level functions when we do uncomfortable things we don’t like. (Huberman has a whole podcast about this for my podcast people out there.)
The paradox here is that by doing Hard things, other things in your life get easier. The more you challenge yourself, the more you set yourself up for success. So when my coach asks me “Why does it have to be hard” or “Why is it so important you prove to yourself it is/was hard" My answer is, to a large extent, “That’s how I know I’ve done something good for me and that I’m taking care of myself.”
It was posed to be me that “We have been raised to think that something has to be hard in order to be meaningful.” And I think that stereotype exists for a reason. Even all the way down to the cellular level, we need resistance to thrive.
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”
That being said, I think it is worth noting that not everything meaningful has to be hard, and not everything hard is meaningful. Taking time to play, or to sit and watch a sunset, taking time to decompress, taking a nice luxurious warm bath or shower, reading your favorite book, hugging a loved one, I could go on and on. These things are not Hard necessarily, but they can be incredibly meaningful and worthwhile.
Hard and Meaningful have to exist in a balance. I’m not saying that balance has to be 50/50, but there does have to be some sense of equilibrium here.
A cool picture I found on this guy Travis Ruskus website. This is not evenly balanced like we think of balancing things on a scale 50/50, but it IS balanced. This is the kind of balance I'm talking about.
If we move on from strictly anatomy of physiology, we can talk about things that are mentally and emotionally Hard. I want draw attention to The Oatmeal’s comic about being Perfectly Unhappy which I feel encapsulates my thoughts on the matter perfectly. I do feel significantly more fulfilled by doing challenging things. I like being engaged and curious. I love having to solve problems and work through puzzles. (Just like in the oatmeal comic above).
Think about how different our society would be if we never did Hard things? Never in history. We wouldn’t have any of the modern wonders or comforts we have no. Figuring things out is tough. We did Hard things to make other hard things in our life easier. Take weaving, it’s time consuming. So someone invented the loom to make it easier. Was that easy to figure out? I can’t imagine it was. What about learning to make a steam engine? Or an airplane? Was it easy learning how to fly? No! But now look, traveling long distances across the country or even overseas happens in a matter of hours instead of days, weeks, or months that it used to take us to travel by ship or by horse or by foot even.
And I think this gets at the essence of what my coach is asking. If I have to walk to the next town, that’s Hard to do and it takes all day. How could I make that easier? I could ride a horse. How could I make that even easier? I could invent a car. Is inventing a car easy? Heck no. But it sure makes traveling to the next town in the future much easier.
There is a saying in fitness that as you get fitter, workouts don’t get easier, your capacity for work just increases, and the difficulty of your workout increases accordingly. You can run further in the same amount of time. You can life heavier. You can perform more repetitions. Not that lifting weights become magically a cake walk. You just move on to a different set of difficulties to conquer.
Life is like this. And I think a great deal of getting through life and not being miserable all the time has to do with your relationship with Hard things and your perception of Hard. In our discussions I’ve been using the analogy of mountain climbing. Climbing a mountain is something that is objectively difficult. If you use the scientific equation for work, climbing a mountain is more work than just walking across flat ground, thus it is harder. Anyway. Climbing a mountain is hard, BUT. There are things you can do to make this hard task easier!
You can spend time training your physical fitness before you embark on your mountain climb. You can dress appropriately so you are comfortable. You can bring hiking poles, wear appropriate shoes, bring water and snacks and other appropriate gear. You can follow a marked trail. You can use a map, compass, app, or other navigational equipment. You have lots of tools and resources at your disposal to make climbing that mountain a tiny bit easier.
Let’s talk a bit about things you can control vs things you can’t control, because I think this plays a crucial role in this argument. The conditions of the trail are not within your control. The trail may have parts where it gets very rocky, or very steep, or muddy, or some combination of all of the above, making your already difficulty hike even more difficult! You have no control over that. What you DO have control over is your reaction to those things.
For me, this is where Hard can become problem, and it is a problem that I would argue is unnecessary. If I get mad at the conditions, and I get critical of myself, and spiral into negative, self-defeating thoughts, I’ve just made this difficulty hike EVEN more difficult. And since this is the part I have control over, this is the part that you CAN make easier. Getting better at handling the components in life that you can control makes a huge difference in how you experience and navigate through Hard things. Do I CHOOSE to be miserable and negative, or do I see it as an adventure and an opportunity?
In summary:
Hard is not your enemy. Hard is the way. It is the path to your own personal summit, whatever that may be for you. Do everything you can to make Hard things easier, but do not refrain from doing difficult things. Use all your resources, get a guide, train for your purpose, use appropriate equipment, trust yourself, celebrate your wins, but DO THE HARD THING. And as best as you can, don’t make it harder on yourself than it has to be. Don’t fight yourself, or put yourself down, or berate yourself, or second guess yourself.
Trust yourself. You got this. I believe in your. Till next time dear reader, go to the Hard thing. <3 Tiff
“Everything you’ve ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear.”
