The easy thing about hard things

Society has become pussified.

I’m still a card-carrying member of society so that includes me.

Our entire existence is blanketed by the warm sheets of comfort. What’s wrong with that? Let’s find out.

For years, I considered comfort a noble state to strive for. But pull back the covers and anyone with a smidgen of common sense will realize this is false.

Back in the day

Let’s rewind a few years to 300,000 BC. Our ancestors were no wimps (the ones that were, quickly died off). Every moment was filled with excruciating trials and tribulations.

Photo by Christopher Alvarenga on Unsplash

Imagine what it was like searching for food. I’m no historian, but to my knowledge, there was not a single McDonalds or Trader Joes in sight. Hence why they actually had to search for food. Digging up roots, plucking berries, chasing down a woolly mammoth, and if the God’s didn’t bless them with regular rainfall they were screwed.

How about building shelter? Again, I’m no expert, but I don’t think they had hammers and even if they did, probably no nails.

And don’t even get me started on their tribal neighbors who would frequently pop over to rape and pillage when they got bored.

You get my point. They survived based on one simple fact. They did hard things day in, day out. But they didn’t remain hard forever.

Hard things

Practically everything we do for the first time is hard. But it’s only hard because we’ve never done it. A catch 22.

Fast forward 302,022 years. Now we are encouraged to stop as soon as something gets too hard. And we continue our search for the mythical shortcut to the good life. But all that does is ensure that each thing continues to be hard because we don’t stick with it.

Easy things

If we stick with the hard things long enough, guess what? They eventually become easy. “Eventually” being the key.

Let’s make this more concrete with a personal example.

A story

I was a shy and quiet kid who should have had the word “introvert” tattooed on his forehead. So naturally, I decided to get into sales.

This was no easy kind of sale either like selling made up solutions for made up problems to rich folks. Oh no.

I sold Atlanta Hawks tickets to a fanbase that’s considered fickle at best. Earning a whopping $10 an hour to make 100 cold calls a day. After my first week, I started to question what I had signed up for after getting hung up on, cursed out, and told to get a life.

My opening line was, “Hey, this is Arman Khodadoost and I wanted to introduce myself as your new personal contact with the Atlanta Hawks!” The only problem was the person on the other line didn’t want a personal contact with the Atlanta Hawks. Especially on a Monday morning while they were driving to work.

But then around week four something surprising happened. It got easier. Still not easy, but easier.

At that point, if my math is correct, I had dialed the phone 2000 times. When’s the last time you tried anything 2000 times? It has no choice but to gradually become easier.

After six months, I was up to 12000 cold calls. The difference between my first and twelve thousandth call was immeasurable. Those initial irate responses started to become cordial conversations. Enough so, that they would not only talk to me but started spending thousands of their hard earned dollars with me. On basketball tickets.

By consistently doing the hard thing it became easy. I could do it in my sleep. In fact, I was doing it in my sleep because many of my dreams were me reenacting certain conversations of closing the big sale.

As the job got easier, my confidence soared. I uncovered a deep truth that had never been revealed to me before. We can make the hard thing look easy simply by doing it over and over again.

I didn’t give in to my natural inclination to quit when it was hard. I didn’t convince myself of the false belief that I wasn’t cut out for sales. I kept going. Call after call. Until I won the game.

I got so good that I received a promotion within my first year. And remember, the deck was stacked against me. I was a painfully shy introvert with no natural skill. If I could do that, imagine what you could do if you simply stuck with the hard thing long enough.

Back to our ancestors

They had no choice but to do the hard things required for survival. I wasn’t around back then to confirm this, but I bet those hard things became easy after enough repetitions.

The first time they tried hunting down a gazelle they almost certainly failed. Along with the next 99 attempts. But they stuck with it because their survival depended on it. And on that 101st attempt, they killed it and their tribe feasted on their efforts.

What hard thing could you make look easy by continuing to do it?

We’ve been force fed a great lie.

We are told to only do what comes naturally to us. And to neglect what is hard.

With that mindset we won’t ever do anything meaningful. I have come to believe that the only things worth doing are the ones that start out hard. Those are the areas we should focus on. They will give us great satisfaction for the simple fact that they were hard.

Nothing that comes easy leaves a lasting impact.

Think back to any great accomplishment you were proud of. Learning how to walk, learning how to ride a bike, learning how to play an instrument were memorable experiences because they were hard. Until they weren’t.

Our parents didn’t tell us to give up on trying to walk because it wasn’t coming naturally to us. They pushed us to keep falling down, getting back up and trying again until it became second nature.

We failed our way to success.

But we’ve taken ease and comfort too far.

Nothing that was immediately easy is worth bragging about. You’d much rather tell the story about how incredibly difficult something was and how much perseverance it took for you to make it look easy.

Let everyone foolishly convince themselves that it was always easy for you when you make it look so now. They will discount the fact that you did that thing thousands of times to merely make it look easy. Big difference.

So who’s with me?

Let’s start leaning into those activities that seem impossible the first go around.

After a hundred attempts it will seem improbable.

After a thousand attempts it will appear achievable.

After ten thousand attempts it will become inevitable.

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I love reading and replying to your insightful comments. See below.

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Thank you to Grace S. for your wonderful edits.

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