Easy is for the ordinary.

Did you try to be the best version of yourself today?

…or did you mail it in?

What’s one day, right?

No one is the best version of themselves every day.

We all f*ck up…we all have bad moments…we all fail.

The question isn’t, WERE you your best, but did you TRY to be your best?

We give lip service to excellence and “doing our best” but then choose to walk the path of least resistance.

It’s easier not to give our best.

It’s certainly less scary (what if we try our best and it’s not good enough?).

We filter our days with micro-decisions; avoiding conflict and confrontation, effort and struggle, pain and failure.

Avoid, avoid, avoid…never giving our best, because, well… why?

That’s an honest question.

We set our daily routine to avoid conflict, struggle, and pain, yet for some reason:

• Our bodies are riddled with painful inflammation from an unhealthy lifestyle,
• We eat anxiety and stress management medication like it’s candy, and,
• Still find ourselves continually swaying between mild depression and panic attacks.

We wake up every day in the same dissatisfied place we were a week ago, a month ago, a year ago…

A simple fix

For one day, just one day, ask yourself this question before everything you do:

• Is it easy?

If the answer is “yes,” it’s the wrong project, activity, path, etc. 

Here are a few examples:

• Watching TV is easy; reading a book is hard.
• Coming home from work and plopping on the couch is easy; going to the gym or even a 45-minute walk is hard.
• Staying quiet during your work meeting when you know the answer is easy; speaking up and owning the solution to the problem is hard.

If you want to grow as a leader, salesperson, parent, lover, etc. “easy” should be a negative filter. 

Nothing worth doing is easy, not over the long term…

• Purpose.
• Happiness.
• Satisfaction.
• Meaning.
• Connection.

These are the result of struggle and the associated conflict and pain which accompany it.

All I’m asking is that you choose hard for one day.

Shit… make ONE hard choice today.

Make one hard choice in which you normally would have picked the easy option.

Then hit me up on Instagram and tell me about it.

I will happily share that victory with you!

Easy is for the ordinary. 

Ordinary people want easy. They seek it out. Everything they do is to make life easy… 

These ordinary people seek refuge in Netflix, drugs, porn, excuse-making, and any number of other instant gratification distractions meant to dull the pain of dissatisfaction that lives in their souls.

But guess what?

When you choose hard…even if it’s just one decision in your day…guess what you become?

F*CKING EXTRAORDINARY!!!

That’s right. Extraordinary starts with one decision to choose the hard path, to do your best work, to engage, to give a shit about yourself and your loved ones.

Find what’s hard in your life, and if you’re struggling with what to choose, take Ryan Holiday’s advice, “The obstacle is the way.”

Whatever the next obstacle is that comes up in your life…that’s it!

That hard conversation with your lover; have it today.

Writing that book you can’t get out of your head; start typing today

Building muscle and taking control of your health; push some f*cking iron around today.

If it’s not hard, it’s most likely meaningless.

…and why waste your life on meaningless stuff?

Seek out hard things.

This is the way.

Hanley

p.s. if you’re not already, subscribe to the podcast here.