The Value of Doing Hard Things
Estimated Read Time: 5 minutes
Setting the Stage
If you look into the lives of what could be considered the most successful people in a field, you can find one consistent trend among many of them. They have overcome significant adversity on the path to greatness. Many people focus on the massive hurdles an individual overcame to achieve greatness. There is far less consideration given to the years of practice these individuals intentionally or unintentionally conducted to develop the skill of being comfortable with uncomfortable situations and overcoming adversity, big or small, to achieve their goals. As Aristotle put it, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
Discussion
Watching humans decide whether to take the stairs or the escalator is fascinating if you have ever been to a shopping center, airport, or other multistory building. Frequently you will find a line of people waiting to get on the escalator when there is a perfectly functional staircase one step to their left or right. Some studies have shown that humans are hard-wired to put as little effort into tasks as possible. Why is it important to be conscious of this? Because many times you will avoid uncomfortability or difficulty without realizing it. Repeatedly avoiding what is difficult or uncomfortable can also skew your perception of what is possible.
A young track and field athlete once explained how they broke the 60-second plateau they were trying to overcome in the 400m dash. They ran as fast as they could all season at every meet and practice but always fell short of breaking the one-minute mark. Near the end of the season, they were in a race on the final straight of the 400m, and the familiar feelings they had experienced all season of their entire body screaming at them to slow down emerged. Their muscles and lungs burned, and every fiber of their being told them they could not go any faster. At that instant, the athlete had a moment of mental clarity. They realized they had the option to agree with what their body was telling them and slow down, or they could choose to ignore these indicators and move faster. They decided to choose the latter, and after they crossed the finish line, their coach came to them, congratulating them on running the 400m dash in under one minute. The conscious decision to be comfortable in an uncomfortable situation ultimately allowed the athlete to overcome the limitation preventing them from achieving their goal. What the athlete once thought impossible became a reality.
Imagine if you applied this strategy to other aspects of your life. What could happen if you systematically ignored your body’s natural inclination to avoid uncomfortable situations? If you consistently practiced doing things just outside your comfort zone, could you become better at doing difficult things? Author Dan Coyle describes working just beyond one’s perceived capacity as deep practice. Deep practice helps increase myelin, the insulation around neural pathways, which leads to increased automaticity. This is a fancy way of saying that frequently practicing things just outside your comfort zone will make these tasks easier over time until they are eventually automatic.
What small things do you avoid in your daily life because they are difficult or take you outside of your comfort zone? Are the compounding effects of avoiding these things limiting your understanding of what is possible? Many people believed a human could not walk on the moon until somebody did it. Many more people believed it was impossible to create a reusable rocket booster that could land itself on a platform floating in the ocean until someone made it a reality. These accomplishments were not the result of one person overcoming one massive obstacle but the result of many people routinely deciding to do difficult or uncomfortable things every day. The more they left their comfort zone, the larger it became until what was once thought to be impossible became routine. The deep practice of being uncomfortable and accomplishing difficult tasks created the pathway to achieve greatness.
Key Takeaways
There is value in deciding to do things that are difficult or uncomfortable. The more you decide to do difficult things, the better you will become at overcoming challenges. Over time, deep practice involving difficult tasks will allow you to have an increased capacity to accomplish what many believe to be impossible. In his speech at Rice University, John F. Kennedy described the importance of doing hard things stating:
“But why some say the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why 35 years ago fly the Atlantic? We choose to go to the moon. We chose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we’re willing to accept. One we are unwilling to postpone. And therefore, as we set sail, we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure that man has ever gone.”
What challenge are you willing to accept and unwilling to postpone that will take you on the greatest adventure you have ever experienced? What difficult or uncomfortable task is the first step on this journey?
The Pack Mule