Life is Full of Hard

Note: This post was going to be published sooner. But its published now. So yeah.

I realise that I am talking a a lot about switching jobs. It has been playing on my mind a lot and has me more stressed out than even I know. And for good reason – moving jobs is one of the most stressful things a person can go through.

Which brings me to the title – a direct quote from Simone. Life is full of hard. This has brought to mind about the way we make life harder for ourselves. And why we do.

I’m going to draw a parallel with gym here. The quickest, and Most effective way to get strong is via a program called 5×5 or Starting Strength. It solely exists to get your strength increasing exponentially while increasing your gym confidence. Each and every movement is done only 5 times (or reps) for a total of 5 sets, and then you rest for 5 minutes between each and every set. This may not seem hard, but the trick is to make sure each weight you’re doing is between 80 and 90% of your one rep max. That’s the weight you can only pick up once before your veins feel like they’re going to leave your body.

Using this method, you’re able to increase your strength in leaps and bounds. Which in turn makes it easier to pick up heavier things. So you can see how it works… By putting more on yourself, you’re able to carry even more. This is all part of our species amazing ability to adapt to any situation.

It reminds me of a post from The Art of Manliness. Its called More Load on the Arch and its premise is simple – when you have a carefree life, or a life devoid of responsibilities, you are listless. You are bored and unmotivated. We all dream of winning the lotto and never needing to work again, but we all need something to give us something to stress about, and work fills most of our day, so checks that box for us. It is well worth the read if you have the time. And it also says that yes, life is full of hard, and yes, that is a good thing. In fact go and make it harder, and just watch yourself rise to the challenge!

We make our lives hard on purpose so we have something to overcome. We are not made to have it easy, we are made to overcome challenges. I suppose this is why I like working in my field – every day is a challenge and every day it allows me to overcome them. I am smarter than the problem 99% of time.

With the rise of life being too easy, we have also had a rise in talking about mental health – people are more depressed than ever, and yet have never had it so easy. It is because life is so easy that we have a rise in all the current ‘issues’. People need a challenge. People need hardness in their life.

We need a challenge. We need a goal. We need something to make our life just that little bit more difficult. We just need to make sure our challenge is real and not imaginary. And in our own quiet lives, we lay down these challenges and we overcome, and once we overcome, we find we are capable of doing even more.

We don’t need an easy life. We need a challenging one.