Sometime in the past, somebody gave me the following advice:
“Do something difficult every day but don’t tell anybody.”
This seems like simple advice. It tells us not to brag. However, as I’ve considered this advice over the years, I feel there’s much more to it…
Sincerity and Humility
It’s true that this advice recommends against bragging. If you keep something difficult a secret, you eliminate some reasons for having done the difficult thing. Obviously, pride and vanity are eliminated as motivators when we do something for ourselves as opposed for a hypothetical audience.
So, by pursuing something for own ends, we avoid the political. We avoid the temptation to review the personal benefit of our options against the increase in our ability to manipulate, sway, argue or bargain with the people who observe our struggle.
Purpose
Of course, if you aren’t doing something difficult for fame and glory, then I have to ask why do we do difficult things? Why don’t we simply take the easy path if nobody is watching us?
The advice to do something difficult also suggests that we find things that align with our belief about what is important and pursue those. It would be foolish to do something difficult (example: drink a bottle of hot sauce) if there were no other personal benefit.
Waking up early to run, eating healthy when junk food is easily available, reading a book when television is so simple to watch…all of these might be very difficult for some people. Each suggests some kind of personal improvement that is meaningful for the person engaging in the task. Running is difficult but can improve your health. Reading may teach you something you didn’t know or enrich your life with a wonderful story. Whatever the situation, the difficult activity is made worthwhile through some personal, internal benefit.
(Tangent: Is struggling with temptation the same as accomplishing something difficult?)
Growth
Why do something difficult every day? Given the assumptions to this point, by repeatedly doing something difficult, we accumulate benefits with each repetition. I think this is because of our physiology, as both physical and mental changes require regular practice to establish.
As illustration of the assumptions: Running every day is important to see results but drinking a bottle of hot sauce every day doesn’t show any benefit when repeated daily. Breaking a bad habit or establishing a good habit requires practice over many weeks or months. Often, these difficult things provide a small benefit on an individual basis but when repeated, changes accumulate.
By choosing to do something difficult on a regular basis, we force ourselves to change and to grow. If something is difficult, the largest challenge is emotional or mental. We need to learn how to adapt to the difficulty. Our bodies can run, but we need the willpower to run…and learning how to exercise that willpower is not trivial. As we learn that we have the capacity to do progressively more difficult things in one part of life, we see that we can do the same in others.
Of course, if we randomly pick difficult things, we’re just being masochists. We torture ourselves because we don’t have enough time to adapt and grow and accumulate the benefit of the difficult activities.
I think there’s more hiding here within that phrase and within the ideas surrounding growth through struggle…but this is what I’ve got, today…
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