Hard things are hard

[00:00:00] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Well, hello! This is The Daily Five with Aurooba, that's me, where we reflect on creating our best lives a little bit every day. Here we go!

[00:00:15] I don't know if today's episode is going to have any answers. It may just end up being a lot of questions.

[00:00:23] You know when you're trying something new You're also often trying to stop doing something old. Instead of, say, sitting down in front of the TV after work, you're trying to take a walk instead. The old thing is watch TV, and the new thing is the walk.

[00:00:41] The reality is sometimes the old thing will win, and you'll just go sit down in front of the TV. You were too tired, you stood for a long time, you just need a moment without having to put in a lot of effort. Whatever it is, you'll almost always have a good reason to justify it. But, what if that keeps happening? What do you do then?

[00:01:04] Obviously, this is why making new habits and trying new things and systems is hard. The current of the old, the status quo, it has a long time to build up. It has a lot going for it. Breaking it is not easy. Is there something that could make it easy? Or, is trying to make it easy the problem?

[00:01:31] I have made sure an episode of this podcast comes out every single day for the last 32 days. This is the 33rd episode. And every episode is complete. Every episode meets my acceptance criteria for a published episode. It has an intro and an outro. The volume is leveled out. The transcript is accurate. There is a title and there is a very brief description.

[00:01:57] For the last 32 days, I have ensured an episode came out no matter what news I got, no matter what pain I felt, no matter how tired I was, no matter how late in the day I recorded. It's not a habit, but it is something newish that I'm doing. How do you accept that doing a good thing is going to be hard and then do it anyway?

[00:02:21] You know, I have pierced ears. The hole in my left ear is at a bit of an angle. So, I got my ears pierced back when they had first started doing ear piercings with a gun. And in my city, they did them at the hospital. I was so excited to get my ears pierced. My parents had taken me to a really nice jewelry store and I got to pick out three pairs of earrings. Studs for the day of, as the hospital had requested, strawberry shaped gold earrings, and a pair of leaf shaped earrings. Fun fact, those strawberry shaped gold earrings are what I still wear as my everyday earrings to this day.

[00:03:03] So, I sat down and a smiling nurse readied the gun and pierced my right ear. I remember being shocked by the noise and then feeling that sudden rush of pain. It was gone quickly and I was fine, but now I knew what to expect. So, when they pierced my left ear, I flinched, and the angle the stud went in was slightly off.

[00:03:26] It's easy to start because we don't yet tangibly know how hard the thing might be. You can plan all you want, read all you want, but a lot of the times you don't really know how hard a thing is till you actually start doing it, in your gut, you know?

[00:03:44] And then, when you know how hard it is, sometimes you flinch. Ugh, I'll have to walk up the hill, and I'll be out of breath, and my legs will hurt, and the shoes will pinch. I'll just stay home and watch TV today and rest. Tomorrow, you know, tomorrow I'll be up to it. But, sometimes, tomorrow doesn't come, or, it does, but not often enough. Not often enough to make a difference.

[00:04:11] If we're always looking for the easy way out, or if we only do things when there's no way out, we're not likely to make a lot of progress. And the progress we do make isn't going to be as good as the progress we could have made if we just did the hard thing. But we like easy, because hard is hard, you know? You don't want to do hard things.

[00:04:37] And sometimes, desire just isn't strong enough, even when we want it to be. So, what do you do then? I don't know. Question for you, perhaps.

[00:04:54] Thanks for listening. Same time tomorrow?