Do challenging things.
Life is easy. We live in the safest, most abundant, and most opportunity-filled existence in the history of humanity. It was a daily grind not long ago to find food, avoid a violent encounter with a wild animal or person, and stay protected in the harsh elements. Almost none of that exists today. Life has become an exercise in appearance, perception, and making choices that will make it even easier, if possible. This is a path that leads to nowhere. There is no evolution, growth, or lessons learned when we take it easy, not challenge ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. Setting challenging goals, and choosing to do the hard things, opens us up to setbacks and failure and exposes our weaknesses. Things that may have wiped our ancestors out, but we now need to evolve and nurture our future selves.
Achieving goals is fantastic. However, if you’ve never experienced failure or fallen short from time to time, your goals aren’t challenging enough. The goal-setting sweet spot is an action, ability, or experience outside your comfort zone. If the goal isn’t challenging enough, we lose focus. If the goal is too hard, we lose motivation or become demoralized from the lack of progress. Finding the right balance is vital, and experiencing failure is key to the process.
Nobody enjoys failure; we’ve conditioned ourselves to avoid disappointment at all costs. Failure brings shame and embarrassment. Looking inept in front of family or friends isn’t an experience we eagerly seek out. Working hard over time, only to come up short, can reinforce doubt and feed that part of our minds that tell us we’re not good enough. But our perception of what might be is usually worse than what occurs. We fear failure, but when we experience it, it’s rarely what we imagine.
We may not experience the satisfaction of achievement, but if we ignore the daily lessons when pushing outside our comfort zone, we miss the most valuable aspect of the goal. What did we accomplish and how far did we go? What did we learn about ourselves and our ability to drive toward a challenging goal?
Failure is not the life-or-death outcome it used to be. Our earliest ancestors lived in a lab of survival of the fittest, smartest, or most ingenious. Saber-toothed tigers devoured the slow runners. Didn’t sharpen your spear enough, no food for you. Wandered too far from camp and got lost, you may have frozen to death in the harsh environment. Life, and failure, are no longer so unforgiving.
That’s why shifting our perception of failure is essential, so we learn the lessons that failure can teach us. Maybe we reached too far, didn’t assess our current abilities accurately, or failed to anticipate the obstacles. Instead of sharing our plans with others, we kept them private and didn’t have the support to see things through. During the most challenging times, we allowed our inner voice to dictate our attitudes and beliefs instead of taking a breath and reinforcing reality.
These may be some of the lessons learned that are unique to each of us. The “chinks in our armor” are exposed when we’re pushing to do hard things. Exposing these flaws is the first step in building the skills needed to overcome them. Instead of providing a safe space in our brains for our weaknesses and insecurities to fester, we can confront and overcome them in the open.
It may appear counterintuitive or unnecessary to actively seek challenging goals, goals that expose the worst of ourselves. But we need to live in that space and work out the thoughts and feelings that go with it. We understandably want to do things we enjoy or are good at. But spending too much time in a comfortable, safe space does not provide the environment for expansion and growth. We need pressure, stress, and experiences that challenge the most sensitive areas of our psyches. Those moments of doubt, when we think about quitting or running back to that comfortable place, are where the magic happens.
For many, internal dialogue, self-doubt, and insecurities may never go away, but they fail to hold us back because when we establish new skills and abilities to address them. Practice and repetition are crucial to building these habits, and this can only occur when we’re doing hard things and consistently exposing the worst of what’s holding us back.
Overcoming our toxic thought patterns and bad habits is our responsibility. We all struggle. There’s nothing special about the person who cruises through life, never battles, the person where everything appears to come easy. That person doesn’t exist, or they’re not presenting their true selves or pushing themselves into areas where they would experience real growth. We have to suffer to grow.
Doing hard things reveals what we’re truly capable of. What seemed like a worthy challenge becomes easy over time, and we must set the bar higher. Years ago, I would get up early and take an hour-long walk. I would cover a little over 3 miles. During those walks, I used to tell myself that I should be running the distance. It would save time and help me get in better shape. I eventually worked up to that and more when I started training for marathons. Now, I routinely run 6 miles in the morning and am starting to get that same thought that I should be running farther. The 6-mile distance is relatively easy, and I’m not going to progress, physically or mentally, if I remain in that space.
The choice to do hard things is the first step in taking accountability for where we are and where we want to go. It requires courage to confront the thoughts and feelings that tell us we’re not enough; we can’t do it. Instead, allow the hard things to feed that part of your mind that strives for more, believes in your potential, and drives you toward your true destiny.