Do the hard things.
I write about choice a lot, choosing your pain, accepting life inevitably involves pain.
The "pain" is obviously a difficult thing to experience, but then the work to overcome it- is the hard thing.
So, taking a step back, if pain is inevitable, and overcoming it is the choice of "doing the hard thing" to be made (obviously or not), then let's ask why we do the hard things?
Obviously if you're in the hole, you could choose to stay there, the other choice being to do a hard thing.
But what if we're not in the hole? What if it's a nice early morning and we don't have to do anything at all. Why choose to do a hard thing now?
Two outcomes to putting yourself across the hard things when you have the chance:
- You gain the good things on the other side of the "hard thing" (resilience, self-confidence, tenacity etc)
- When hardship finds you, you know you've crossed to the other side before.
"Do the hard things" is both a call to service every day for you to choose, and an encouragement to those who don't have much choice.