It’s supposed to be hard!

It’s supposed to be hard! That’s something I yell out when I’m feeling exhausted working out. It’s not meant to berate me or demoralize me, quite the opposite. Reminding myself that it requires effort and it’s going to hurt and supposed to be inconvenient is the key to growth.

This lesson keeps popping up for me and so I thought I’d share some ideas around this notion of “hard”. I was recently listening to an excellent podcast and the person being interviewed shared something I found fascinating. He was telling a story about recruits and how at the end of a grueling fourteen days, most would band together and collectively fight back or quit. Under his leadership he was able to retain 90% of new recruits! How did he do it? Did he make it easier for them? Did he let them get away with things? Did he speak nicely to them, cheer them on or coddle them? Not at all. Everything remained the same except for one key thing. He gathered them together and asked, “How many of you think that the next two weeks are going to be easy?” No one lifted their hands. He explained that it was going to be hard, at times it would suck and that they would be richly rewarded if they preserved! That’s it! He did not minimize the pain; he simply shifted their perspective!

I believe that we think life should be easy and when it’s not, we think something is wrong with us, the process, or the system. Worse, we think that because something is hard, it’s not meant to be, and we recklessly abandon our dreams!

H – Hustle

Any goal that is a stretch is going to require hustle. That might mean more hours, sweat equity and little recognition at first. I love remembering that achievers get rewarded in public long after the years and sometimes decades of their private hustle and grind!

A – Awareness

When we’re faced with adversity or we’re dealing with something that is hard we gain self awareness. We learn what motivates us, what demotivates us but more importantly we are introduced to the best possible version of ourselves in the process!

R – Resilience

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.” - G. Michael Hopf. I love so much about this quote, and it reminds us that we’re changed and strengthened during the hard times and become soft when things are easy. The hard times refine you and build increased resilience!

D – Determination

As we hustle, become more self-aware and build resilience we will gain greater capacity to take on more, try new things and reach levels we never thought possible. We will eventually see wins once the storms pass and in that exhilaration of having completed our “impossible” goal, we will have even greater determination to take on what’s next for us!