The Thing About Doing Hard Things

Photo by NEOM on Unsplash

The first time you ran a 10km distance, you felt like you were going to die. You didn't die. You didn't plan to cover 10km. But each time you said you would stop at a particular point, you got to that point and you just kept running. It felt like something within you was now unleashed. You kept running. You didn't feel your legs anymore. The previous day you had only completed 5km. The previous days before that you had averaged just 3km. So when you finally reached the point you stopped, you felt something new emerge within you. Something alive, raw, and primal. Satisfaction is a loose word for it. The way your skin felt startled, surprised by the sun now hitting it, the heavy breathing and how your chest felt loosed and light, the knot in your belly, and the space in your mind. A new sensation.

You realized this new feeling. You had wanted to keep running. You only stopped because while you were excited by the unusual distance you had run, you knew there would be consequences. Your body may be happy with this new stretch, but it would also refuse to allow you to work for the rest of the day. You had chores to do, meals to prepare, and work to complete. So you stopped and vowed to pursue this feeling again the next day. The next day came, your alarm rang so many times, but you heard none.

Doing hard things is hard. It's hard for a reason. Or maybe no reason. It's so difficult reading for three hours. It's difficult to focus and work for 2 hours without distractions. It's difficult to pray for long. It's difficult to study for long hours. It's difficult exercising for a longer duration. It's difficult to run long distances.

But doing difficult things is what makes you happy. You like to think that joy, true joy, exists beyond the point of your present capacity. Joy is the reward the universe gives you for stretching. It is its way of telling you to stretch more; to reach again another time. It's its way of saying, "If you repeat this tomorrow, you'd be happy just like you are now."

You have always wondered why childbirth has been unequivocally stated to be the most painful human experience, yet mothers still give birth to more than one child. Do they forget the labor pain? Or does the joy of holding another human formed within and birthed by them make them ready to relive such an experience? You heard that the moment a mother hears the cry of her baby, the entire ache and pain in her body vanishes, and in its place is pure, intense joy. No joy is compared to that.

And it's been more than a week now and you've not run again. You wish to. You long for the after-feeling of hitting that impossible distance and the rewarding bliss and joy that washes over you. You long for it but don't have the will to go after it.

And you realize how gradually you're losing your staying power. You pick up your phone the moment studying feels boring. You scroll through Instagram between tasks and you close the book once it poses any form of mental heavyweight. It's difficult doing the hard things now because satisfaction or a semblance of it can be purchased cheaply. Why wait until the end of a 10km run to feel good when you can get a quick dopamine hit watching gossip on Instagram or a video reel on TikTok?

You loathe yourself not because you procrastinate, but because you understand the reason and science behind procrastination and still do it anyway. You resent yourself because you always have a glimpse of what reaching your goals would feel like and know just how you can get there but each day, you move farther away from it.

Isn't anxiety the way your mind protests against your self-sabotage?

You're not an unhappy person. You're just not running towards your happiness, literally.

So you've learned to gamify your life. You've built in difficulty levels into your routine. You play with tasks and make work a gaming experience. You've included lifelines, rewards, streaks, and difficulty levels with prerequisites for each one.

For instance, you designed a reading plan for 50 days. There are five levels. The first is "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and the last level is "The Beginning of Infinity" by the British physicist, David Deutsch. The other three books in between are "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith, and "Notes from Underground" by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

You now understand how momentum builds, how each little victory builds a yearning for more victory, and how the thrill of a victory is directly proportional to the perceived difficulty in attaining such victory.

And it's not just the satisfaction of conquering each level. It's also the corrective implication of each victory on your self-image. You begin to wear a new identity: a person who does difficult things. The more you do this, the more you gather evidence of your ability to do hard things. You build a portfolio of a list of hard things you've done: reading five hours a day, running 21 km, staying without your phone for three days, fasting for 24 hours, walking for 2 hours, avoiding music for one week, avoiding social media for two months, working on a project in one sitting for 6 hours, completing a 10-hour course in one day.

These strings of Hard Things You've Done become a reference to your mind when it's about to doubt, relapse, procrastinate, defer, or resign from a difficult task. You have evidence of how you have done something difficult before and how you absolutely trust yourself to do it again.

And beyond the amazing boost in mental energy and ego, your life begins to have meaning, too. You're now having more sunlight and disconnected from the constant exposure to an assortment of entertainment, information, and cheap thrills that leave you numb and listless. You begin to feel proud of your accomplishments, no matter how private they may be. You begin to identify yourself as a person who conquers difficult tasks. You also become a more interesting person. You have richer stories to tell and more exciting discussions to have with friends. You no longer loathe loneliness or need people to fill up spaces or provide a sense of excitement and thrill in your life. You see every day as an adventure, starting each day with a question:

“What hard thing shall I conquer today?”

And after a while, you realize that truly, narrow is the path that leads to life.