Falling In Love With Hard

I’ve come to realise something recently: I love hard.

I love it. I love challenge, difficulty, problem. I might not always act like it, but I do.

This might sound like a revelation I should have had years ago, but I really mean it: hard is how I want to live my life.

Yes, we all love a good challenge – I’m aware of that.

But a hard life? That’s different, isn’t it? To never reach easy – that’s not usually the end goal, right?

Well, it is for me now. I want the adversity, the struggle, the never being “there”.

I want rejection, criticism, failure in all forms. I want the weight of Being thrust upon me, so painfully real that I can’t avoid it.

Why?

It’s simple.

I love myself. And because I love myself, I want to be better. Always.

I don’t want to settle. I want to improve. I want to learn and move forward, forever.

It’s not about judgement or satisfying the ego. It doesn’t mean beating myself up if I fall down. It doesn’t mean I don’t accept myself for where or who I am, right now.

It’s about love and it’s about respect.

It means acknowledging myself as good enough, now, deeming myself worthy to take control of my own life and to create my own path.

And then it means moving forward, stepping up to the next challenge that I set for myself, allowing myself to become everything I can possibly be.

Because I love myself. I want to give myself access to the inexplicable power that I know I have within.

And for that to happen to me, life needs to be hard.

It means facing fear, overcoming obstacles, pushing back against the limiting beliefs and self-doubt that plagues me.

It means falling down and then standing up, again and again. It means respecting my right to fulfillment.

And it means enjoying it every step of the way.

Challenge easy.

I used to want easy. I thought it was the answer to my negative outlook on life: more couch-potato-ing, less hard work, more, “you don’t’ have to do this”, less, “you can do this”.

For years I complained that everything was hard, wondering when I would finally get a break. I cursed the earth for making me incompetent.

But I realised that when I got those opportunities for easy, I didn’t want them.

I took the easy, stable job over the challenging self-employed lifestyle, but I couldn’t sustain it.

I tried to avoid facing my problems, because it was easier, but I wasn’t able to let go of them and they haunted me.

I lied to myself, because the truth was too hard to accept.

And guess what? I suffered all the same – worse, even.

The pain of easy was the pain of regret and disappointment.

I became a shell of who I was. It was as though my insides had been scooped out.

I realised that easy is boring, stagnant, unfulfilling – and the worst form of pain. Easy wouldn’t take me where I wanted to go.

I decided the hard life was for me. Fuck easy.

Now, I love being incompetent. It means I can become competent.

I love that I have an incredibly long journey ahead of me, and I love that I will never be able to reach the end.

It’s the game I want to play, the game where there is no end goal, no reward at the end of the road. The reward is the journey. The whole thing.

Embrace hard.

First, you accept yourself. Then you challenge easy. Then you embrace hard.

Hard is the answer. It gives you strength beyond your wildest dreams.

Hard gives you the capacity to conquer discipline and earn self-respect. It gives you access to new opportunity you thought you’d never have.

I love hard. If hard wasn’t there, I wouldn’t get to see the best me. I wouldn’t get to see the extent of my strength and resilience, and my potential for growth and fulfillment.

Hard is the path.

We’re amazing, us humans. We’ve done so much, and we can do more.

You’re amazing, and you’re capable of unbelievable feats you might not believe are in you.

If you embrace hard, if you challenge impossible, you’ll transform.

You’ll become a god or goddess.

You won’t know yourself, in the best way possible.

Again:

- Accept yourself.

- Challenge easy.

- Embrace hard.

- Watch what happens.

Respect hard. Love it. Love yourself and love your life. Experience the euphoria of knowing you’re doing everything you can and everything you want.

That’s where I’m headed. Won’t you come with me?

Thanks for reading!