Doing the Hard Thing is Instinctively Hard
Now go practice those bunker shots.
Preamble: At the risk of repeating myself, while I hope you get something from reading this, it is not meant to admonish you, the reader. I’m hoping it reinforces some habits for myself. Remember, Marcus Aurelius did not write Meditations for wide consumption, rather, it was for his own benefit. He was writing to himself.
“The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.” ~ Confucius
“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?” ~ Marcus Aurelius in Meditations
One of the infinite ironies of human existence is that we seek comfort, we avoid resistance, avoid the hard thing, in order to conserve energy and increase the odds of survival. (Remember, nearly everything we do is rooted in the need to have enough to eat and not get eaten.)
And yet, the hard-wired tendency to avoid discomfort is also preventing us from reaching our full potential. As a species, in particular in developed countries, we’ve gotten so good at surviving that whatever we need is just an app away. Got some errands to run? Just pull out the MegaStoreDash app and it will all arrive at your house within 1 to 24 hours. And all of that leads to less exercise – both physical and mental. We’re not thinking through the steps needed to navigate the world to get the errands done and we aren’t getting in any steps either.
It’s so easy to fall into the trap of doing the easy thing – again, it’s just hardwired within us. Take, for example, a practice session on the driving range. If you’re not careful, you can fall into a habit of practicing your best club over and over again, session after session. Why? Because it’s easier. If you are prone to flubbing chip shots but can hit a fairway club high and far, you’re more likely to rake ball after ball with that club than you are to bring some balls to a short-game area and figure out how to make better contact. There’s no shame in it, that’s just what we do as humans without even thinking about it.
"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." ~ Marcus Aurelius
In order to improve that part of our golf game that’s inflating our scores or in order to acquire a skill that gives us a leg up on the competition in our occupations, we need to get comfortable with discomfort.
Do the hard thing, just do it. Just get started. Ask yourself, what is the one simple thing that I can do right now in just a couple minutes. Some mobility stretches? Some putting drills in your living room to work on start line?
Think you can’t row any longer on the rowing machine? Just do a couple more strokes. Now you think you can’t? Just do a couple more, just a couple. Almost like a mindfulness meditation, when you find yourself losing the task at hand, re-direct yourself and keep going.