It's a Hard Knock Life - Do The Hard Things

Some lessons in life are HARD, they're harder if you're stupid, or in my case, if you don't DO THE HARD THINGS.

"Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible." - George C. Lorimer

I was in the basement of the house we were renting, at the time, and didn’t notice until “after” that I was actually standing in a little puddle of water. In hindsight, this would turn out to be pretty important. 

We had just moved in and needed to get the washer and dryer hooked up, in the basement obviously. Not knowing all that much about the process, I found the power cord for our dryer had only three prongs, and the outlet at the new place had four holes. So off to Home Depot.

I came back an hour later with a four-prong cord and started replacing the old one. Here’s where I almost Slipped Away!

As I’m standing and looking at the new cord, attached to the dryer, comparing it to the pattern of the outlet, it occurs to me it doesn’t look quite right. So I step a little closer to the outlet, which put my foot into the puddle mentioned earlier, and I raised the new cord to the outlet for a test.

When I woke up, I was lying on the floor with a scorched power cord in my hand and second-degree electrical burns on my neck and ear. My wife who giggles when she gets scared was standing on the stairs laughing and crying. I felt like Rodney Dangerfield, no respect.

I now know it’s the proper technique to flip the power breaker OFF when replacing power cords, especially on a 240-volt circuit, AND never be standing in water at the time! Lesson learned.

It's a hard knock life, at least I didn’t die…

This one today is another, in a long list for me, that I didn’t learn right away, and I suffered a lot of years for having put it off.

 What’s your “Hard Thing”?

image - pixabay - mohamed_hassan

Most of us don’t like doing “hard things”, they suck. I am much better suited to umbrella drinks in Margaritaville than analyzing spreadsheets and moving data into a usable format, or to digging a drainage ditch by hand, or wiring dryers, apparently. All of which I’ve had to learn to do.

But I’m not talking about that kind of “hard”.

No, this is more the mental, emotional or “in your head” type of hard stuff. The things you THINK are hard.

Like "What the hell is Bawitdaba, da bang, da bang?"  

image - pixabay - keilasmile

Like setting boundaries with Uncle Buck who just doesn’t seem to get how obnoxious and inappropriate they can be around your kids.

Or, confronting a co-worker who tip-toes a little too close to that razor-thin line between appropriate and Fatal Attraction.

Or, my personal favorite, having a serious conversation with your partner about your needs, emotionally, physically, and sometimes sexually. That conversation HAS TO HAPPEN in any successful relationship. I’ve been married almost 28 years, and we’ve had this conversation numerous times…the first one is always the hardest…you THINK.

I can see clearly now...the hardest part was simply starting the conversation. The rest felt like lifting a weight off my shoulders and sent me walking on sunshine.

How about these?

• Cutting down on your alcohol use. 

• Making healthy diet choices. 

• Starting a workout program, or just getting off the couch to go take a walk. 

• Picking up the self-improvement book that’s been sitting on the shelf for two years.

•  Turning off the TV in the evening and doing something that feeds your hopes and dreams, like reading or listening to a podcast or YouTube video. (Or reading this Blog)

• Whatever the ONE THING is that you know you need to do, or stop doing… to get to that next level in life, no matter what the level is…YOU KNOW what I’m talking about.

I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. I was complaining about it to a good friend one day and he said “When was the last time you wrote something every day?!”

“Well, what do you mean every day? I asked.

“Dude, you can’t just Frank Abagnale your way into it…you have to actually write some sh#t.”

Sometimes your best friends are the ones who will be brutal with you. 

Like me, right now. With you…keep reading. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

And he was right.

If we’re being honest, just getting out of bed and going to work is hard sometimes. We’d much rather every day was Saturday.

Hell, simply “Adulting” is hard…

As I’m writing this, I am talking to a mechanic about car issues, shuffling getting a son back and forth to school and work, talking to my wife, texting my wife, and about 12 other phone calls, letting the dogs out to potty…and I have to visit a friend in jail this afternoon…TODAY was hard!

99 Problems, right? I know.

Why they’re called “HARD THINGS”

image - pixabay - alexas_fotos

People are people, all brains work differently on some things, and all brain works exactly the same, on others.

They are called ‘HARD” because YOUR brain doesn’t like it.

My brain doesn’t like distraction. I prefer to get somewhere quiet, let the juices flow, and bang this stuff out, like having a conversation. Today, I’ve been having multiple conversations with multiple people, plus texting my wife and son,  and I’ve yet to finish the original conversation that I started 4 hours ago.

It’s HARD!

That’s how MY brain works. 

The very definition of “hard” implies, well, that it’s hard. Maybe it would work better if we used “DIFFICULT” instead of “hard”? Like when you're trying to follow an M. Night Shyamalan movie.

But we need to remember we’re talking about brain hard, thought hard, not like diamonds hard. Diamonds can be measured, how do you measure thoughts??

There are only a couple of reasons why they feel hard to you, so here comes the brutal truth (and listen, I battle these too!):

1) It’s out of your “normal” - Most people like being in a routine, it’s safe and there’s less to stress over (Like my quiet, distraction-free, work area). We just get up and go through the motions, picture Ryan Reynolds in Free Guy. It feels like too much effort to ADD something else to my plate, or one more thing to put on my already full to-do list. 

Our brains are wired to protect us, trying to keep us safe. Constantly working to free up computer processing by making things into habits so we don’t have to “think” about them. 

The more actions our brain turns into a habit, the more free space we have to make decisions like what shoes to wear with these pants, or did I call my sister to say “Happy Birthday”, and if I did forget is she going to make me suffer for the next six months, do I have time to make a bagel or will that make me late for work?

We get so “habitual” I bet there have been times you got all the way to work, pondering all sorts of questions, then looked up only to realize you just missed your turn, and now you are definitely going to be late!

They could be hard because they are out of our “normal”, out of our “comfort zone”, or they could simply require more effort than we want to apply right now.

But that’s not the one that's going to "bake your noodle".

2) The biggest reason is FEAR. That big wall you keep hitting when you “think” about the thing in front of you that feels “HARD”, is most likely FEAR.

We fear the outcome - What if I speak up at work and they fire me? What if they say “yes” and I’m not ready? What if I leave and I'm never gonna fall in love again?

We fear people’s response - What will my friends think? What will my parents think? What if it hurts their feelings? What if I ask her out and she rejects me, or maybe she doesn’t but then dumps me later?

But mostly, we fear FAILING - I’ve tried this before and it didn’t work. 

What if I quit my job to start chasing my dreams and I fall flat on my face? What if I write these posts, record these videos and NOBODY looks at it, and if they do, nobody likes it…or is that just me?

In the examples above, when we pull the activity to the front of our thought processes, we think “That’s too hard, I can't do that right now”. 

So we don’t. We just curl up in a ball, like Sea Bass found us on the bathroom floor.

But I want to tell you why we SHOULD.

Maybe, it’s only HARD to YOU 

image - pixabay - geralt

“Hard” in this sense, is 100% a subjective term, specific to YOU and your thinking. It’s hard TO YOU.

I know… that’s hard, sorry, that’s difficult to accept. But hear me out.

Forgiveness is hard “to you”, because “you don’t know what they did to me”. But, some people forgave someone who murdered their loved one…it’s possible.

Talking to strangers is hard “to you”. It’s not hard for a 60 minutes reporter lightly grilling Obama or Bush 2.

Getting out of the bad relationship and starting over is HARD…but is it harder than living in it? You’ve been single before, you found this one.

Spending less than you make and being financially healthy is HARD…ME TOO…but is it harder than bankruptcy and losing your house? 

Turning off the TV and picking up a book that teaches you how to improve a part of yourself is HARD. Not Binging all 6 seasons of Breaking Bad, in one weekend, is hard.

Putting all 23 flavors of a Dr. Pepper down and grabbing water is HARD.

Meal prepping and skipping the taco truck is F@@@ing HARD!

Going to the gym for the first two weeks is HARD.

Putting aside distraction, setting aside playtime and comfort to pour yourself completely into chasing your dreams, nights, weekends, when everybody else is asleep or at the lake…that’s HARD!

But it’s all been done before…somebody did it. And if they did, YOU CAN TOO. So can I.

There is good news Springfield, and this is WHY you "should" do the HARD things.

It doesn’t stay HARD

(My inner twelve-year-old laughed when I typed that!!!)

We don’t remember all the hundreds of things in our lives that were hard at one point in time, we just don’t.

We don’t remember learning to tie our shoes. We don’t remember learning to use a fork. 

Every time I see the TikTok of that little girl trying to put the straw into the lid of the cup she’s holding, then she gets so mad that she throws all of it away, I giggle out loud.

I distinctly remember the first time I heard the entire Metal Health album. I don't remember the lie I told my parents because I wasn't allowed to listen to devil music.

It was “hard” the first time I sat down with my wife to tell her my needs and concerns, to discuss how we were communicating, and things that were bothering me. I was afraid.

Now we do it all the time. Whenever there is a hiccup or a flare-up of emotions, we talk it out, immediately. More like an Oprah interview, not Jerry Springer..

The first time I sat down to put my thoughts on paper and share them with the public, I experienced real fear. The same thing happened the first time I recorded a video to share.

The first time I stood up on stage to speak, I had the theme song from 8 Mile running through my head.

Now, almost 10 years later, as I’m staring down the road to creating a business from doing both those activities, my brain says “This is too hard.”

But I’ve been here before. I know it’s fear. And I'm singing Whitesnake not Eminem!

EVEN after writing the blog about jumping out of an airplane and telling myself, “What do you have to be afraid of now, you jumped out of an airplane?” I still know it’s fear.

But I also know that the sooner I get over myself, and the fear I’m feeling, the sooner it won’t be HARD anymore.

I know this for you too.

So here’s what you’re gonna to do:

 How to do the HARD THINGS

 image - pixabay - geralt

1. Take a step back and examine what’s the HARD thing here? What is the one thing that holds my focus and I think “that’s hard”? Not the whole picture, what is the one little piece of it that’s hard? What's the trailer, not the whole movie.

2. Go back and read the post on me jumping out of the plane…click here. Look through the process of breaking it down into baby steps. Do the same thing with what’s in front of you now. Not like Gary Keller's The One Thing, that pushes you forward. What is the One Thing that is holding you back?

3. Put together all the other pieces of whatever it is you need to do and look at them too. Let yourself understand that those pieces aren’t hard, we’re building momentum.

4. Set a plan for what actions you need to take to do the thing, make a list if you need to. I love it when a plan comes together...

5. Then move the HARD one to the front of the list, the rest don’t matter if you don’t attack that one, so do it first…also, our brain wants to put it further down the list, that’s just more procrastination and fear, STOPPIT.

6. Celebrate the good times. Come on...this is a big deal, don’t just waste it. Acknowledge that you did a hard thing.

   

7. By celebrating your win over fear, you’re establishing a pattern in your brain. You are also adding ammo to your gun for the next time you hit a similar situation. You can look back and go, “Remember that one time…” 

Cold Plunging

Cold plunging is HUGE right now. Where somebody has a tank, or a shower, or a whatever and they jump into freezing cold water.

Aside from the health benefits that I won’t go into here, the number one reason people do it is to establish a pattern of doing a hard thing first.

Tony Robbins is open about the fact he cold plunges almost ever day and he is very clear on the WHY.

He says (paraphasing), “I don’t do it because I like it. I do it so my brain knows when I say “GO”, it doesn’t have a choice, it goes.”

Start doing the HARD THINGS first!

image - pixabay - ryanmcguire

I love you guys.

We’ll see ya next time,

Dewey