What’s your hard? What challenge do you choose every day to set yourself up for success the rest of the day? Whether it’s a physical feat or a mental exercise, incorporating challenges into our daily routines to build the inner strength essential for navigating life’s complexities
Once you acknowledge that life is a series of problems to solve, not a pathway paved for your comfort, you can use challenges and adversity as catalysts for growth, both personally and professionally.
Choosing Your Hard
So how do you choose your hard? I encourage those within my organization to choose physical challenges throughout the week. But don’t let yourself get comfortable. If doing 50 pushups is easy for you, try to get 100 in tomorrow. Prove to yourself that you can do hard things. And if you weren’t able to accomplish your hard goal, use your failure as a motivator to achieve that goal, not an excuse to give up.
Many of my followers may be surprised to hear that if I had to choose, I would actually prioritize physical fitness over meditation. Why? Because I can meditate anywhere throughout my day. Physical exercise needs to be set apart and scheduled in (at least for me). But maybe your version of hard does look more like creating time to meditate, or maybe it’s finding half an hour in the morning to work on your new side hustle before your 9-5. Whatever it is, choose it and challenge yourself to stick to it!
Emotional Fitness
At the end of the day, the power of accomplishing your chosen challenge every day is in building emotional fitness so you can tackle the unexpected ones with more clarity and resilience. When you do hard things every day, you trust yourself to overcome whatever life throws at you. Failure and struggle becomes an exciting opportunity for growth rather than something to avoid or back down from.
Embrace the Challenge, Reap the Reward
Embracing hardship is not about punishment but preparation for the trials and triumphs ahead. So take the first step, and start small if you need to. If you’re used to sleeping in and ignoring physical exercise altogether, then waking up 30 minutes early to go for a walk will be difficult for you. That’s okay! Start there. You are capable of doing hard things. Prove it to yourself!
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References
Timestamps
[00:00] Intro
[00:40] Coaching My Kids on Overcoming Challenges
[02:36] Choosing Your Hard in Business and Personal Life
[05:31] Embracing Physical Challenges for Emotional Fitness
[07:30] Why I Choose Physicality Over Meditation
[13:40] The Importance of Emotional Resilience
[25:52] The Future of Work and Technological Advancements
[32:02] Inner & Outer Takeaways
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