When you don’t want to do hard things…

I recently listened to a podcast called “Do Hard Things”.

It is a marketing podcast geared towards entrepreneurs, and although it’s a message I am extremely familiar with, for some reason at THAT moment, I needed that reminder.

In the podcast, the speaker shared a story about an old football coach he had who had a chance to answer the question, “What is the one piece of advice you want your kids to remember after your gone?”. His answer was strong and simple, “Do hard things.”

The reason was because he knew that nothing good happens in your comfort zone.

All the best lessons, discoveries and wins happen OUTSIDE, where things are hard, uncertain and scary.

You’ve heard the quote, “Losing weight is hard. Staying unfit is hard. Choose your hard.” or some variation of it.

But my goodness it is so true.

What the quote meme doesn’t have time to explain to you is this:

The first hard is an immediate feeling of “hard”.  It is hard from the get-go. It’s hard to wake up, it’s hard to do a work out, it’s hard to eat well.

Whereas the second hard isn’t hard until much later. In fact, it’s easy to eat cake, and to sleep in, and to skip workouts.

But what we forget about is the delayed hard is ALWAYS much, much more worse and more painful that the immediate hard.

The delayed hard is disease, discomfort, digestive issues, brain fog, low energy, pain and so much more.

If we had chosen the immediate hard, all of a sudden it isn’t so hard anymore. It is replaced with energy, mental focus and clarity, strength, flexibility and freedom.

This morning I stopped 3 reps into my workout. I set the heavy weight down and tried to talk myself into lowering the weight and starting over.

It was HARD.

But I knew I had a choice… I could choose the immediate hard, or the delayed hard.

In that moment I chose the immediate hard. I kept the heavy weight. I pushed through.

AND MY GOODNESS was it worth it. I obviously haven’t reaped the “physical” benefit of it yet, but the mental benefit and confidence it built, even just today, will outweigh any physical side effect a thousand times over.

It was just one more reminder to keep doing hard things.

So my friend… does it seem too hard right now?

You were created to do hard things, to THRIVE outside of your comfort zone, to experience the FREEDOM on the other side of hard things.

You CAN do it!! Do something that challenge and pushes you today. And if you do, I’d LOVE to hear about it.

Xo,
Emily