10 HARD THINGS TO START DOING FOR YOURSELF

Marc Chernoff

In 1911, two explorers, Amundsen and Scott, embarked on a race against each other to become the first known human being to set foot upon the southernmost point of Earth.  It was the age of Antarctic exploration, as the South Pole represented one of the last uncharted areas in the world.  Amundsen wished to plant the Norwegian flag there on behalf of his country, while Scott hoped to stake his claim for England.

The journey there and back from their base camps was about 1,400 miles, which is roughly equivalent to a round-trip hike from New York City to Chicago.  Both men would be traveling the same exact distance on foot through extremely cold and harsh weather conditions.  And both men were equally equipped with experience, supplies, and a supporting team of fellow explorers.  But what wasn’t certain is how each of them would approach the inevitable challenges they faced on the road ahead.

As it turned out, Amundsen and Scott took entirely different approaches to the very same challenges.

Scott directed his team to hike as far as possible on the good weather days and then rest on bad weather days to conserve energy.  Conversely, Amundsen directed his team to follow a strict regimen of consistent daily progress by hiking exactly 20 miles every day, regardless of weather conditions.  Even on the warmest, clear-sky days, when Amundsen’s team was capable of hiking much farther, Amundsen was absolutely adamant that they travel no more than 20 miles to conserve their energy for the following day’s hike.

Which team succeeded in the end?

The team that took consistent daily action.

Why?

Because what we do EVERY day defines us!

Today’s progress is always compounded by yesterday’s effort, no matter how small.

And it all comes down to the power of self-discipline.

Think about the most common problems we deal with in our modern lives—from lack of presence to lack of exercise to unhealthy diets to procrastination, and so forth.  In most cases, problems like these are not caused not by a physically present limitation, but by a weakness of the mind—specifically, a lack of self-discipline.

We put the hard things off until tomorrow—because the “weather” is bad—until we’ve lost our edge.  We grow accustomed to the idea that things should be easier than they are, and that waiting another day or two makes the best sense.  Then one day we wake up and we’re emotionally incapable of doing the hard things that must be done.

Let this be your wake-up call!

Your mind and body both need to be exercised to gain strength.  They need to be challenged, and they need to be worked consistently, to grow and develop over time.  If you haven’t pushed yourself in lots of little ways over time—if you always avoid doing the hard things—of course you’ll crumble on the inevitable days that are harder than you expected.

And if I had to guess, I’d say Scott’s team suffered in exactly this way.  They tried to make things easier on themselves—the fantasy of “easier” became their mantra—their subconscious goal.  But this fantasy was never going to be a reality during a 1,400-mile footrace in the South Pole.

Scott’s team lost the race, not on the ground, but in their heads first.

They were convinced that waiting made things easier.

Don’t follow in their footsteps!

Many great things can be done in a day if you don’t always make that day tomorrow.  Take positive action and plant the right seeds in your life right now.  Nature herself does not distinguish between what seeds she receives.  She grows whatever seeds are planted.  This is the way life works.  Be mindful of the seeds you plant today, as they will become the crop you harvest tomorrow.

So with that principle in mind, I want to share some key daily practices we’ve seen make all the difference in the lives of hundreds of our coaching clients and course members over the past decade—simple (but far from easy) things they do every day that ultimately move their lives and goals forward.  And it’s no surprise that many of these practices directly or indirectly involve strengthening your mindset—because when we think better, we live better.

1. Start letting go of unnecessary ideals. – When a thought comes to mind, ask yourself if it’s helping you grow or holding you back.  Take back control.  Make the unconscious, conscious, and let go of what isn’t serving you.  This form of letting go is not giving up.  It’s surrendering any obsessive emotional attachment to particular people, outcomes and situations.  It means showing up every day in your life with the intention to be your best self, and to do the best you know how, without expecting life to go a certain way.  Have goals, have dreams, aspire and take purposeful action, and build great relationships, but detach from what every aspect of your life must absolutely look like to be “good enough” for you.  Just accept reality and then respond effectively.  Focus on what matters—what moves you forward today—and let go of what does not.
2. Start putting your heart and soul into the things you do. – There’s a big difference between empty fatigue and gratifying exhaustion.  Life is short.  Invest daily in meaningful activities.  And don’t wait around!  Too often we wait—because we think we need to “find” something new or different to be passionate about.  But that’s not true.  If you want more passion in your life right now, act accordingly right now!  Put your whole heart and soul into the next thing you do.  Not into tomorrow’s opportunities, but the opportunity right in front of you.  Not into tomorrow’s tasks, but today’s tasks.  Not into tomorrow’s run, but today’s run.  Not into tomorrow’s conversations, but today’s conversations.  I’m absolutely certain you have plenty in your life right now that’s worth your time, energy, and passionate focus.  You have people and circumstances in your life that need you as much as you need them.  You have a massive reservoir of passionate potential within you, just waiting.  Stop waiting!  There is no tomorrow.  Put your heart and soul into what you’ve got right in front of you!  Become it, let it become you, and great things will happen FOR you, TO you, and BECAUSE of you.
3. Start stretching yourself just beyond the edge of comfort. – When you’re struggling to make progress, that’s when you actually are.  Let that sink in.  It’s far wiser to spend an extremely high quality ten minutes stretching yourself, than it is to spend a mediocre hour running comfortably in place.  You want to be stretched to the edge of your ability at least once a day—it needs to be hard and uncomfortable for a little while.  But most of us don’t want to be uncomfortable, so we run from the possibility of discomfort constantly.  The obvious problem with this is that, by running from discomfort, we are constrained to partake in only the activities and opportunities within our comfort zones.  And since our comfort zones are relativity small, we miss out on most of life’s greatest and healthiest experiences, and we get stuck in a debilitating cycle with our goals.  We keep doing what we’ve always done, and thus we keep getting the results we’ve always gotten.  And our true potential falls by the wayside.  Choose differently!  Go to environments that expand your mind.  Spend time with people who inspire you to stretch yourself.  Read books.  Grow.  Get better.  Your life is your choice.
4. Start taking more deep breaths, so you can mindfully collect more lessons for the long run. – It’s incredibly easy to overestimate the significance of a single decision, outcome, or event in the heat of the moment.  But you must remind yourself to take a deep breath when things don’t go your way.  Your results in the long run—good or bad—are always the byproduct of many small decisions, outcomes, and events over time.  The truth is we all fail sometimes.  The greater truth is that no single failure ever defines us.  Learn from your mistakes.  Grow wiser.  Press on.  Character and wisdom are sculpted gradually.  They come with loss, lessons, and triumphs.  They come after doubts, second guesses, and unknowns.  The seeds of your success are planted in your past failures.  Your best stories will come from overcoming your greatest challenges.  Your praises will be birthed from your pains.  So keep standing, keep learning, and keep living.
5. Start side-stepping senseless drama. – Tune out the cheap shots people take at you along the way.  Don’t waste words on people who deserve your silence.  Sometimes the most powerful thing you can say is nothing at all.  Seriously, before you waste it on anger, spite or frustration, think of how precious and irreplaceable your time is today.  Give yourself a permanent break from the drama that can be easily avoided—just don’t engage in it.  Life is just too short to argue and fight.  Count your blessings, value the people who matter, and move on from the drama with your head held high.  Remind yourself that calmness is a human superpower.  The ability to not overreact or take things personally keeps your mind clear, your heart at peace, and yourself moving forward.  Take constructive criticism seriously, but not personally.  Listen to others, and then operate with your own intuition and wisdom as your guide.
6. Start staying true to your values and convictions. – Rejections don’t matter in the long run.  Accept them and refocus your attention on what DOES matter.  What does matter is how you see yourself.  Always make a habit of staying 100% true to your values and convictions, regardless of what others think.  Never be ashamed of doing what feels right.  To help you implement this positive habit, start by listing out 5-10 things that are important to you when it comes to building your character and living your life.  For example, Honesty, Reliability, Self-respect, Self-discipline, Compassion, and Kindness.  Having a short list like this to reference will give you an opportunity to consciously invoke and uphold your handpicked traits and behaviors in place of doing something random simply for the purpose of external validation.  (Angel and I discuss this in more detail in the “Self-Love” chapter of our book.)
7. Start looking for silver linings. – The most powerful weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.  Train your mind to see the good in the truth.  Studies have shown that doctors who are put in a positive mood before making a diagnosis consistently experience significant boosts to their intellectual abilities than doctors in a neutral state, which allows them to make accurate diagnoses almost 20% faster.  Similar studies of other vocations have shown that optimistic salespeople outsell their pessimistic counterparts by over 50%, and university students primed to feel happy before taking math exams statistically outperform their neutral peers.  So it turns out that our minds are literally hardwired to perform at their best not when they are negative, or even neutral, but when they are positive.  So think a little less about managing your problems and a little more about managing your mindset.  Do your best to keep it positive.
8. Start focusing inward more often. – Do your best to focus inward, as often as necessary, whenever you need a moment of clarity.  And remember that your time spent focusing inward and finding clarity doesn’t just help you—your mind is powerful and your thoughts create ripples in other people’s lives.  When you bring clarity into your life, you bring the best of yourself into everything you do—you tend to treat yourself and others better, communicate more constructively, do things for the right reasons, and ultimately improve the world you’re living in.  This is why praying, or just meditating on some positive mantras, on a daily basis can actually make a real-world difference in your life.  A heightened level of your conscious awareness—mental clarity—instantly elevates you in countless ways.  And then interesting things begin happening—good things that are outside of your immediate purview—good things you haven’t even thought of yet.
9. Start embracing your humanness and giving yourself more credit. – “Human” is the only real label we are born with, yet we forget so easily.  To become attached to an opinionated label of depressed, divorced, diseased, rejected, or poor, is to be like the rain, that doesn’t know it is also the clouds… or the ice, that forgets it is water.  For we are far more than the shape we’re currently in.  And we, like the wind, water, and sky, will change forms many times in our lives, while forever remaining beautifully human.  Once we fully embrace our humanness, it’s almost funny to see how quickly we outgrow what we once thought we couldn’t live without… and then we fall in love with what we didn’t even know we wanted.  Take this to heart.  And don’t forget to pause once a day and appreciate how far you’ve come.  You’ve been through a lot, and you’ve grown a lot.  Give yourself credit for the steps you’ve taken, so you can step forward again with grace.
10. Start taking the next small, insignificant step (one at a time, every day). – Sometimes it’s really hard to get going again.  This is how Angel and I felt a decade ago when we were stuck in a rut after simultaneously losing two loved ones to suicide and illness.  It was really hard to move when we didn’t think we had the strength to push forward.  But we pushed ourselves to take one tiny step every day—one journal entry, one workout, one honest conversation, and so forth—and it felt good, and we got stronger.  And believe it or not, that’s basically what I did again this morning.  I was struggling to motivate myself after a significant business opportunity fell through.  I was feeling defeated.  So I took the tiniest possible step.  Just turning on my computer, opening up the word processing application, and writing a single sentence.  Such an action is so small as to seem insignificant, and yet so easy as to be possible when I was feeling defeated.  And it showed me that the next step was possible, and the next.  And the end result is the blog post you’ve just finished reading.  (Angel and I build tiny, daily, life-changing rituals with our students in the “Goals and Growth” module of Getting Back to Happy.)

Your turn…

The next step forward is yours for the taking.  Just pick one of the aforementioned points and start focusing on it for a few minutes every day.  The key is making sustainable shifts in your beliefs and behavior.  That means practicing each point gradually—one at a time, one day at a time, and then letting them build on one another.  Go from zero to ten over the course of a few months, not all at once.

Will it be easy?

Not likely.

As you marshal forward in life, adversity is inescapable.  And it’s much like walking into a turbulent winter storm—like the ones Amundsen and Scott inevitably encountered on their race in the South Pole—as you fight to push onward, you not only gain strength, but it tears away from you all but the essential parts of you that cannot be torn.  Once you come out of the storm, you see yourself as you really are in raw form, without the baggage that’s been holding you back.

And that makes all the difference—because it frees you to take the next step, and the next.

So tell me, which point mentioned above will you choose to start working on today?  Why does it resonate with you?