Everything is easy when you feel like it

Remember when you said you were not going to quit when it gets hard?

You expected Hard to be glamorous. When you imagined Hard, you thought of a 300kg deadlift, or running 100km naked through the jungle. You thought Hard would arrive huge and intimidating like the Incredible Hulk, wearing a sequinned cape, in a sleigh pulled by twelve fire-breathing reindeers. ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ - you thought he’d say, ‘I’m Hard and you can’t beat me!’ And you would rip your shirt open like Superman and shout ‘You don’t know me, son!’ and knock him out of his boots. The ultimate triumph of courage over fear, and resilience over weakness. Fanfare. Curtain.

But Hard is not glamorous. More often than not, Hard arrives like a dead bug in your bag of frozen blueberries: a seemingly small, off-putting nuisance that shouldn’t make a difference but turns everything icky. A pebble in your shoe, a little voice inside your head, a discomfort that you just don’t want to face. A subtle sense of not wanting. It seems so inconspicuous you don’t even want to fight it, and that’s what makes it so powerful.

'“I’d love to start working out, it’s just going to a new gym and having everybody stare at me that I can’t stand!” - that’s your Hard.

“I could run a half marathon with this ankle injury, but resting it for 6 weeks is too boring!” - that’s your Hard.

“I would totally have this difficult conversation, if only I wasn’t afraid it will upset people.” - that’s your Hard.

Inconvenient truth: it doesn’t matter how much your legs ache, how much you’re sweating, how fast your heart is beating, how big or admirable the task at hand - as long as you feel like you want to continue, the work is easy. That’s why everybody’s always looking for motivation: because everything is easy when you feel like doing it. That’s why a 300kg deadlift is sometimes easier than taking out the trash.

Hard begins where motivation ends.

Fig. 1: You think this looks hard? You should see me trying to do the laundry.

When you feel like getting out of bed, or getting out the door, or picking up the phone will literally kill you; when you can’t possibly face one more minute, one more burpee, one more step, one more day; when you have thought of all the pros and cons and found twenty reasons why quitting would be a noble and righteous thing to do, and you are 100% certain you won’t regret it; when there is literally nothing to get you started or keep you going other than a promise you made to yourself for reasons you can’t remember, back when you were a version of yourself you can’t even recognise: that’s when Hard begins.

Don’t quit at that point.

Because it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about fitness, work, or relationships: everything worthwhile requires consistency, and consistency is impossible if you only do something when you feel like it. If you can’t show up when it’s hard, you are never going to make any progress; you will be stuck forever in a loop of start-quit-start, with nothing to show for your efforts except a raging insecurity that you’re incapable of making anything work.

But of course, you knew all that, and that’s why you promised yourself you wouldn’t quit when it gets hard, remember? Trust that promise, even when you can’t recall the reasons you made it, and you’re not even sure if you’re the same person anymore. You knew you’d be at risk of quitting at some point - you just thought you’d quit in the middle of an epic battle against the Hulk. But you forgot that ‘hard’ simply means something you really don’t want to do - and everybody wants to fight an epic battle against the Hulk. It didn’t occur to you that you would quit over a dead bug - and that’s why you keep quitting over a dead bug.

Notice when you want to quit.

This is your Hard.

Continue.