I recently listened to a podcast about doing hard things.
The problem with doing difficult things two-fold. First, defining what is hard. The other, is knowing why you would do that.
Defining Difficult Things
I do things every day that other people might consider really hard, like getting in twenty minutes of exercise before breakfast. Because it’s summer, I’m walking a mile every morning. I love the time I spend doing this. It wakes me up, gets me ready for the day. In the winter, I’ll ride the pedal machine again. I won’t regret that time either.
Many people would consider this hard. I don’t. There are days when I can’t do it, because I’m physically not capable of doing it. Otherwise, it’s just a habit.
I recently started doing a series of exercises to strengthen my leg muscles. I’ve learned that while the walking is good, it isn’t enough. I really need to spend the time doing “leg day” as it were.
I’ve made it easy for myself. I do it right after I walk. It’s three exercises per day. It takes me between five to ten minutes. And it’s already making a difference in terms of how my legs feel.
At first, this absolutely felt like a hard thing. It’s starting to become just a habit. But I know that for some people, it would always be the difficult thing to do.
Now, for me? Getting to the gym on a regular basis is really hard. I just don’t do it. I’ve tried multiple times to arrange it into my schedule so that I can make it a habit. Just haven’t figured out the right combination of things to make it happen.
Another thing they talked about on the podcast was reading difficult books. I read a lot of popcorn. I’ll be the first to admit that. However, I also enjoying tackling books that aren’t popcorn, that are rich and dense and chewy. I don’t do it all the time, but I will do it now and again.
I do NOT want anyone to ever be ashamed of what they’re reading. I’m not about to yuck your yum. Only read lighter books if that’s what makes you happy. But you can also celebrate the reading of heavier books if that’s your thing.
And that leads us into the second part.
Why Do Difficult Things?
I will admit, I was at first kind of caught up in the hype, how doing difficult things on a regular basis is good for you, will build self-confidence, help you grow as a person, give you a greater sense of accomplishment, improve your mental health, etc.
Then I stopped and took a hard look at my life.
My husband still teases me about being The Towering Mountain of Self-ConfidenceTM. Sure, I can always work more on myself. And I do. Project Leah and all that.
But do I honestly need to be looking for things that are difficult to challenge myself with? And to do them just because they’re difficult? Or do I need to continue as I am, with the confidence that I can do the hard things when they come up?
Right now, Blaze and I are taking a class learning about marketing and setting up a pretty complicated sales system inside our Shopify store. (Which you should totally go and check out. https://knottedroadpress.com) I’ve had to learn a lot of new software, keep track of a bunch of details, and in general, do some hard things.
Though the work itself isn’t that difficult—it’s the constant grind. So many things to do and not seeing any reward in the present, having to trust and hope that it will come in the future.
As I mentioned above, I haven’t been able to figure out how to get myself to the gym. The question is, do I really need to? Or do I need to figure out how to replicate the benefits I was planning on reaping from the gym by doing specific exercises at home?
For example, one of the things that I was regularly doing at the gym were sprint intervals on the bike. I’ve tried doing these on the pedal machine—just doesn’t work. The machine is wrong. Are there other sorts of sprint intervals that I can do at home that are low impact? Not really I’m afraid. But maybe I switch to high-intensity interval training instead, because there’s a lot of those that I can do at home.
Doing any sort of interval training really sucks. It is what I need though in order to increase my endurance. Do I suck it up and call this my “hard” thing that I do regularly? Since I can see benefits from it almost immediately? Time will tell.
The other thing I was doing at the gym was some level of strength training. There are many (many!) DIY body-weight strength training programs you can follow. I’ve done them off and on. Maybe it’s time to get back to those as well. Or find something that I can (and will) do.
Doing this hard thing, that is, strength training, provides immediate short-term benefits, benefits I can see. Just doing exercise “because it’s good for me” isn’t enough. If I’m going to do something hard, I need to have my WHY directly front and center.
Why should I do an exercise that I hate? All it’s going to do is build frustration in my life, friction when I’m not certain of the benefits.
Instead, I’m pushing for finding things that will give me definite benefits that will be easier for me to do.
Other people might still call them hard. I need to figure out a way to make them easy, so that I’ll do them.
So what about you? Do you believe in doing hard things? Do you regularly do hard things? Do you need a WHY for them, or do you just do them?