Key Takeaways
- →The hard you choose is rehearsal for the hard that chooses you.
- →Chasing work-life balance is often chasing comfort. Point the season at your because.
- →Write the hard thing down the night before. What you wrote down is the only negotiation.
It's 2:30 in the morning. Chris Paradiso is four and a half, five hours into a route from his house to the Chick-fil-A in Enfield and back.
He didn't bring water. That part was on purpose. He wanted the night harder than it had to be: "I didn't carry water."
His son is at Parris Island, learning to do hard things the Marine Corps way. Before he left, Chris made him a promise.
While you are in the Hurt Locker I want to visit the Hurt Locker with you.
Chris Paradiso
His wife found him on the road with water. By the time he got home, he'd covered 48 miles. He never posted it. In his words, "that was a me and Gianni moment."
When life is on fire, you don't need a reason to do hard things. The fire is the reason. The harder question is why you'd do them when life is fine.
That's the question I brought to Chris, the founder of Paradiso Insurance and author of Civilized Savage: The Daily War Against Comfort.
Full disclosure: Chris and I started an early version of that book together years ago. The finished book is his.
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Why do hard things when life is fine?
I asked it straight: "If I can still be good at work and I'm still a decent husband and a decent father and I'm in okay shape, why do I have to do hard things?"
It's a fair question. Nobody's grading you on a 48-mile night. The business still runs. The kids still get picked up. If good enough is working, effort beyond it looks like vanity.
My answer is rehearsal. I pick hard things so that when I have a tough time, in my words on the show, "it's not hard."
The hard you choose has a start time, a finish line, and a reason. The hard that chooses you shows up at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday with none of those.
Choosing the first kind is how you decide your response before the second kind tests it.
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Chris has a different answer, and it's the better half of the argument.
Your because is bigger than your why
We all talk about your why. Chris talks about your because.
And my because is my everything. And that's where my inner strength comes from.
Chris Paradiso
He wrote the book for his kids: "Why did I write this book? I wrote this book for my children."
The 48 miles weren't a fitness goal. They were a message to his son at Parris Island: "your dad's going to be there, he's going to suffer with you."
Here's how I read the difference. A why is a reason you can explain at a dinner party. A because is a reason you'll keep moving for at 2:30 in the morning with no water.
You can have a great why and quit at mile 12. The because is what's still standing at mile 40.
That's the first filter. If you can't name your because, you're not ready for the hard thing. You're ready for a story about the hard thing.
Work-life balance is comfort in disguise
This is where Chris and I line up, and where he goes further than I do.
I hate the word balance. I'd rather chase harmony: seasons when your family gets more of you and seasons when the work does.
Balance says if you're not home at 5 p.m. every day, locked in, you're failing somebody. That standard loads guardrails, shame, and regret onto ambitious people who did nothing to earn them.
Chris hadn't thought of it as harmony: "I haven't really thought of that word, but I like it." Then he hit the gas.
In my opinion, when people want balance, they want to figure out a way for more comfort in their life.
Chris Paradiso
That's why the book's subtitle is The Daily War Against Comfort.
His first question for anyone asking for more work-life balance is how many hours there are in a week. Most people can't answer, he says. "There's 168 hours in the week. And if you work 40, that ain't balance."
Now the part I'll push on, for both of us. Harmony can turn into balance's nicer-sounding cousin. "It's a season" is true right up until the season lasts four years and happens to be the comfortable one.
The word doesn't matter. The direction does. If the season points at your because, it's harmony. If it points away from the hard thing, it's comfort with a better vocabulary.
The scoreboard is zero to zero
Chris defines a civilized savage in one line: someone who "lives a lifestyle that every single day they wake up and the scoreboard is zero to zero."
Yesterday's 48 miles don't count today. That sounds brutal until you realize it's also mercy. Yesterday's failure doesn't count either. You get a fresh game every morning, and you have to play it.
That's why he doesn't trust motivation. In his words, motivation "has an expiration date." Everybody is motivated, he says. What's left when it runs out is the promise you made.
His first large triathlon is the proof. He admits it plainly: "I quit in that water a thousand times in my head." What kept him going was a promise: "What made me keep going was I made a promise to myself."
His kids were two and three. He pictured every training session and himself crossing the finish line with them. His wife took a picture at that finish line. He'd never told her that was the dream.
The scoreboard resets. The promise doesn't.
Stop negotiating with yourself
Every hard thing comes with a lawyer. It's the voice before sunrise that makes a reasonable case for sleeping in. Chris's ruling on that voice is the best line in the episode.
Except that voice is not real. And whatever it tells you, do the opposite.
Chris Paradiso
His method for shutting it up is almost insultingly simple: "Write it down and you will not negotiate with yourself. The only negotiation you have is what you wrote down."
I love this because it moves the decision. You don't decide before sunrise, when you're tired and the bed is warm. You decide the night before, on paper, when you're thinking straight.
The before-sunrise version of you doesn't get a vote. He gets a list.
The filter: chosen, aimed, written
Here's the operating filter I'm taking from this conversation. Before you sign up for your next hard thing, run it through three checks.
Did you choose it? If life picked it for you, it's not rehearsal. It's the test. Handle it, but don't confuse surviving it with training for it.
Is it aimed at your because? Hard for the sake of hard is a hobby. Hard aimed at the people and the work you'd suffer for is the thing that holds when the voice starts talking.
Is it written down? If it's not on paper, it's negotiable. If it's negotiable, you'll negotiate.
That middle check is where this episode meets Easy Mode, the book I've been writing. Easy Mode is not a pass on hard things. The Hard Mode Trap is talented people putting real effort in the wrong direction.
Chris doesn't do that. He picks his hard and aims it at his because. That's the whole game: effort pointed at what you're built for and who you're doing it for.
Win
Near the end, Chris told me about a question he got to ask the one-star general who runs Parris Island: "the Marines are called in. What's the first thing that comes to your mind?"
In Chris's telling, the general "looked at me with his pearly whites and he says, win." And "the way he said win, there was no doubt in his mind."
That's what a because buys you. You don't negotiate with the voice, and you don't wait for balance. You wake up at zero to zero and go do the hard thing you already wrote down.
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This is the way.
Hanley.
Disclosure: I currently work for PFS Global, the company behind this episode's sponsor read.
