Going to the hard tasks trains your muscle for being able to deal with them. It slowly over time, through repetition and practice, becomes the new norm instead of doing easy, inefficient and low-impact actions.
When I stretch, I always start the split on the left side. After some reflection I realized it’s because my left side is stretched better. So I feel better doing the split on the side that I feel more confident about.
Same happens with tasks. There is a desire to go to the easy tasks because I know I can do them and it will boost my self confidence. Even if we are not aware of this, it is still happening.
A hard task runs the risk of violating our confidence and challenging our idea of what we can do. This is exactly what I want for myself in theory but not always how I actually end up acting.
Recently in our house, we’ve been discussing the philosophy of active attacking of hard things. The hard things are the high-impact actions. There is a reason why they seem hard and scary. Nora brought up the idea that it is not actually the task itself that scares you but rather certain negative emotions associated with it.
For example, I keep putting off launching my brand because of secret fear of failure and exposure. It is not the actual actions that I am putting off. I am trying to avoid the negative emotions.
So once I figure out what to do about those emotions, I can actively go to the hard tasks.
The tremendous benefit of this approach is that after you master “the hard”, everything below that on the hierarchy of difficulty is eazzzzzzzy.
For example, before I was completely opposed to the idea of using weight for workouts. Then I was persuaded to try a heavy dumbbell. With time, although it’s still hard, I can feel myself getting stronger. Push-ups are more manageable. I am edging my way up to pull-ups.
Going to the high-impact hard tasks in the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day.
Most importantly, it trains the “dealing with the hard” muscle. I don’t need it all the time but I do need it in key moments for high-impact actions with inertia.
Time to get to my hard tasks now.:)