APADIA 27: Hard Things Are Hard

(Yeah, I know. I’ll give you a moment to get your giggles out.)

I read an article recently that reminded me of a profound and oddly encouraging truth.

When you’re successful at anything in life – in business, in a relationship, at fitness, at eating properly, whatever – it’s almost never because that work comes effortlessly to you. The destructive, lazy, demotivational impulses hit you too.

It’s not whether you get hit with the urge. It’s what you do with it.

Athletes just give in less to junk food whims than un-fit people. Prolific writers give in less to procrastination than not-so-prolific ones do.

I guess you could see that as discouraging: that there’s no secret. But to me, it’s phenomenally encouraging. You’re not a failure because you struggle. The struggle isn’t a sign of your weakness. It’s a sign of humanity.

This quote from the article had me doing mental 🙌 👏 🙏:

“Success and health are not contingent on divine intervention, or a supreme, genetically-passed willpower. [They] just have habits that make success more likely, and a trained ability to delay gratification that grows with each tough decision.”

I said, just this week, to people at the gym, similarly if less elegantly:

It’s not hard because you suck. It’s hard because it’s hard. 

We are all up against a challenge. We’re all in this together. To me, that’s enormously heartening.