Hard things are hard.

If you're not conditioned to the activity, you get tired quick.

If you quit then, you'll only ever know and be able to tolerate that level of activity.

But you press on, you come back, you try again- now you get a chance to get a little bit better.

You try again, gain a little bit more.

That's it. That's the post. Tomorrow and the end result you want, is not promised.

The only promise is you try today, you gain something, in that moment, today.

Live to fight another day.

Resilience.

Sometimes things work out in your favour. A lot of the time, it doesn't.

Neither of these times last, and we'd do well to remember that.

When the going gets tough, keep going! A tough phase is not where you want to stop.

Get your mind right, invest in activities to boost those good internal signals e.g. eat something healthy, drink water, go for a walk, touch grass, feel the sun on your skin.

At the end of the day, believe in tomorrow. Tomorrows another day, another chance to be just that little bit better than you were today, in skills, in happiness, in life.

It's always darkest before the dawn.

If you look at life, and everything in it, as a game- or a series of intersecting games, within other games, I think that has value.

Looking at things, in terms of a game, allows you to look at the events in your life objectively, as you would watching any other game being played.

(Obviously, if you're emotionally invested in certain games (who isn't), you'll need to think of a game that doesn't make you want to riot when your team loses.)

A game has players, rules, goals, an area of play (boundaries), consequences, techniques, skill, luck and "interpretations".

All these, while not an exhaustive list, make up any of the games in your life.

For example, the "getting a job in tech" is a game. "Wanting to get into a relationship" also a game with the sequel "trying to stay IN a relationship". There's "how to navigate difficult work situations" games as well as "I want to be a rockstar in my field" game.

If you learn the rules of the game, and play them better than anyone else, with some luck, persistence and technique, you can win at the games you choose to play.

A game, like life, is not to be taken too seriously.

Discipline, will power, and consistency.

Consistency in discipline will save your willpower, to aid your consistency in adhering to your discipline, which will save....

There is freedom routine. In structure.

Life will not always be like this, but all things in life fall into two broad categories.

Those things you can control. And those things you cannot.

You can control your routine, the things you plan to do with your day.

The freedom is now you don't have to umm and aaah about that decision anymore, it's done.

And you are free to move on.

And should you choose to move on- stay the course.

Given 6 hours to chop down a tree, Abhraham Lincoln would have spent four hours sharpening the axe.

On a new venture, an new idea, project it's tempting to dive straight into action.

Why not? It's the exciting part. Action speaks louder than works right? It's time to get sh!t done!

Yes. But more effectively, No.

If you work hard at the beginning, to learn, understand what it is you're trying to do, every action from there becomes more intentional, more informed and more calculated towards your specific goal or objective.

The tempation to allay the feeling of not "doing something", just fills time in with lower-value space where a higher value of "unit of work" could have been put there instead, given more time spent doing the "sharpening".

Invest in being a better learner, being a better do-er, before doing the "doing".

"Strong ideas, loosely held" is a concept revisiting my lexicon.

They say you should "find your tribe", but what do you do when you've searched high and low, far and wide, and you still haven't found them?

You travel alone.

"Let people be themselves" is another phrase I've heard lately that resonates with how we travel in this life.

Instead of persuading people to be something you want, or you yourself becoming someone you're not- if you haven't found your tribe (yet) despite doing what you can to see and be seen by them, then you are where you're meant to be-

And you travel alone.

I know people need people, we're social animals.

So, travelling alone is a strong idea in the moment.

I don't mind holding it loosely.

After reading "Deep Work" by Cal Newport, and revisiting "The Social Dilemma" after, the two ideas that come together from these two pieces of work are the following:

The distraction machine that is social media and most technology, on the surface at least, provides very little real value per person. The attention concentration of billions of superficial and unremarkable human signals, coalesce into one very overpriced and sub-par experience.

Repeated, and replicated over and over again.

There's nothing new on social media, the emails and notifications of the same tired half-arse of a human experience, are not anything we haven't seen a gazillion times before. Sure, the colours and resolution of this clickbait and outrage-inducer is of a higher, sharper quality, but the content- the subject matter? Zzzzzzzz.

The alternative...

This could also have been called "The Pain of Knowing".

When you've experienced something, you've lived it. You know how it went, how it felt, deeper than any words could ever express the full experience of having done "the thing".

"There's something to be said for experience" is a phrase any young people coming into the work force may be able to relate to. Because the experience is what they're lacking and usually leads the young person missing out on an opportunity.

But there is something to be said for experience.

Once you've experienced something (and YMMV), you "know" that thing.

Knowing isn't necessarily something you can put in words, or writing, but it's part of you now, like your DNA. And if you come across that situation again, something inside you will resonate with the external experience and call on the wisdom, that "knowing" to serve you in that moment.

All this to say, experience is valuable in ways a lot of people don't fully understand and keeps being the differentiator between the doors that open to you, and the ones that don't.

So however you can get it, the pain of doing needs to be got out there, and done.

The internal monologue.

The narrative, the characters and plot.

The decisions and reasons for one action over another, or lack of reasoning all together. Still a reason, but lacking intentionality, lacking purpose.

We tell ourselves little stories, all the time. All. The. Time.

There's never not a time when we are not part of a storyline of our own doing, or a side character in someone else's story they're telling themselves.

Dave Chappelle was addressing students at Allen University...

"This idea that what you do in your lifetime informs the generation that comes after you is something I keep thinking about"

Obviously we can think from ourselves foward, and be all "be a good example for the next generation".

But so too we can think of about what our grandparents did with their lives, informed my parents generation who, what and why the world was, which ultimately fed into who we are and how we thought of ourselves.

I don't like public speaking- not really- I can do it, I'm good at it I know that, but I don't really like it.

But the idea, that if I get up and speak on some things, and be visible for a generation of people who look like me, that the act will inform this next generation, of who, what and why the world is- is not something to be disregarded lightly.

Tautua, in Samoan means "to serve" or to be "of service".

My mum taught me this through action.

So if not for the legacy that I might leave behind...

then for the legacy that paved the way for me.