If you truly want to feel like you’re elevating, progressing, and improving, get comfortable with doing hard things now.

A life’s principle that’s relevance can hardly be ignored and certainly can’t be denied. The suggestion that doing challenging things now will allow you to live a more relaxed, less stressful life later, has some truth to it. Is it appropriate to conclude that making difficult sacrifices in the short-term is bound to benefit you in the long-term? That engaging in productive, healthy, empowering habits now will mitigate your probability of living a chaotic, hectic, unfulfilled life in the future?

I’d say so.

There’s no denying that doing the things we know we should do now is substantially difficult, however. The friction and resistance feels insurmountable and it commonly delays our progress.

We know, at least subconsciously, that facing our friction and engaging with the challenging routines often mandated by success of any measure, would help our ascension.

Whether that’s waking up during the early gargantuan hours of the morning to provide ourselves the competitive advantage that is bound to propel us ahead of our former selves, or engaging with meditation practices and journaling to work on developing the internal awareness that admits you into a life of purpose and growth. You can certainly choose the path of least resistance now, as many do. But it’s almost certain to raise the probability that you’ll pay the price for that lack of willingness to do what’s hard now, down the line.

We, unfortunately, seem to have a hard time believing that our consequences for choosing easy now will be dire later. If we brush aside the minor, seemingly insignificant, positive actions we know we should be including in our daily routines, today, we fail to consider the repercussions of such choices, later down the line. We may also be under the false impression that the actions and tasks we choose to do now, against our persuading desires to do nothing productive with our time, won’t make a difference now or later. Whether that be a positive or negative change, many of us aren’t convinced that the actions we take now will have any impact whatsoever on our future’s unfolding. This subconscious belief couldn’t be further from reality and is often a consequence of learned helplessness or a failure to adopt full responsibility for your life’s outcomes. If you point fingers of blame towards external conditions, you’ll never adopt the belief that what you do matters. And that’s because you’ve spent too much time attributing your outcomes to outside events, reinstating the fallacy that your actions have been a result of your conditions rather than your decisions. An outlook that’s far more disempowering than its contrary. If you continue to repeat such narratives, you’ll continue to lie to yourself, destructively reassuring yourself that your lack of growth, production, and progress is because of your environment’s unfoldings and not your own choices and actions.

All growth, development, and achievement require an adoption of more responsibility.

And ultimately, that brings with it a tremendous amount of consideration and ultimately, sacrifice. Any progress you’re bound to make requires you to choose to engage with this internal friction and work to overcome it by doing the hard things now at the cost of doing something else that’s maybe easier. That’s your opportunity cost, so we economists like to call it. Sure, you could mindlessly scroll Instareels for a few hours before bed, or binge a Netflix series. But those distractions are only going to waste away the costly moments that could be invested in the creation of something colossal, or at the very least, meaningful…

If you decide not to do the frightening, difficult, all-too-easy-to-avoid internal work today, you’ll fall victim to your destructive thoughts, self-defeating habits, and limiting fears later. Perhaps when it matters most. By not doing the work to understand your heartaches, manage your pain, and heal your deep-rooted wounds, for example, your limitations will continue to direct your outcomes and manifest a life of lack, confusion, and trouble in the future.

It all boils down to you.

Your desires. Your choices. Your decisions. Your actions. Do you want to do the hard things now to increase the chances that you’ll live easier later or vice versa? Do you want to continue to spend your money needlessly or invest it for the long-term? Will you choose to invest in your health now to add on more years to your beautiful life later, or disregard the minor decisions that aid the good health you strive for and pay the consequences down the road? Do what’s asked of your best self today so you can live better tomorrow.

Do all that is “hard” now. Read, write, journal, meditate, contemplate, reflect, refine, eat well, and recover optimally. And remember that depending on your decision, either which way you choose, your life will be gravely impacted by the compound effect of your present choices.

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” – Confucius

Make the sacrifices now demanded to ensure your safety, security, and health in the long run. No matter what you visualize for your future, out of these two choices, understand the power and impact that each choice carries with it. Upgrading your inner being, taking your experience to new levels, and realizing your heroic potential requires you to do hard things now.

Suffer more, fall more, challenge yourself more, fail more, push more, plan more, do more.

Please, do so today. Wake up earlier, get in an ice bath, get that gym membership, open up that book, go for that first walk or run, go buy a journal, have that difficult conversation, or start that business you’ve been fancying. Do the extra run, do the extra rep, hit the extra shots, whatever “that” is for you → hold yourself accountable to do what’s mandated now to see it through.

Because waiting and choosing to do what’s easier and more convenient today will only make your life more difficult down the road.

And if you don’t believe me, just wait, and find out for yourself.

Choose challenge over comfort. And slowly but surely, you’ll find yourself growing in confidence because you’ll be stacking more evidence for yourself that you can show up and come through for yourself, even when it isn’t easy.

That result, a more confident version of “you,” is worth every bit of the investment you make today.

And so… Do hard things. Now.