You Need to Read 'Do Hard Things'

QUOTE OF THE DAY

HOW TO DO HARD THINGS

430 Words | 1 Min 30 Sec Read

Our proudest memories often originate from our most gruelling experiences.

Whether that’s finally getting a degree after 4 years of hard work and studying, beating that boss on a game after failing 50 times, or finally completing a marathon after 6 months of training.

In order to complete these gruelling tasks, it requires a high level of toughness. People typically think that being tough is about brute force and confidence; however, Steve Magness studied the science behind toughness to understand what it means to be able to do hard things, and here’s what he found:

Embrace reality.

Traditional toughness says to act confident, no matter if you are or not; however, the science of toughness says to embrace reality.

If you were to go to a marathon, you would see some noobie runners that sprint off the start line and others that start at a steady pace. The noobies are trying to act confident, whereas the more seasoned runners are embracing the reality of the hard task at hand.

“An ounce of doubt keeps me sharp." Colonel J. Rodgers

Toughness is determined by your expectations before the endeavour. If you underestimate the challenge, then you will panic when reality sets in, so your best bet is to have short-term pessimism and long-term optimism.

Understanding your internal alarms.

To avoid burning out or panicking when things get hard, you need to calm down the part of your brain called your amygdala (your internal alarm system).

It's like an empty fuel gauge; once it tells you that you’re running empty, you don’t need it to keep flashing at you.

The way to do this is to learn to control your own emotions and know the clear difference between temporary discomfort and long-term pain.

Once you can identify something that is temporarily uncomfortable, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel and therefore control your emotional reaction.

ACTIONABLE NEXT STEPS:

1) Embrace the hard things.

Being naive and telling yourself that the hard thing won’t be hard won’t help you do the hard thing; if anything, it will just make it harder as your expectations aren’t matching reality.

Therefore, you’re better off expecting the hard thing to be hard and embracing it in order to best plan for it.

2) Meditation is a great way to learn how to control your internal alarms.

There was a study done that found that people with 10,000 hours or more of meditation were able to completely turn off their alarm system when they wanted to, as compared to people with no meditation experience.

LESSON OF THE DAY ⤵️

You need to find the thing that makes you tick.

Most people are either being pushed by something or pulled by something; no matter which one is for you, you need to find it and use it to your advantage.

Take a look at Jordan Peterson talk about the rat study.

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