This is a manual for doing hard shit in life. The manual I wish I’d had at 24. Written with love. Now, it’s important to note: This isn’t just a bunch of advice. It’s a how-to, that you can put into action. You’ll only really see benefit from action. This isn’t something you have to do now, or all at once. You can come back to it when you are ready to put it into action, when you need it.

Doing hard shit is absolutely possible, no matter what doubts you might have about yourself. It just takes some training. Endurance athletes can train their tolerance for pain, so that they don’t have to quit when most humans would quit. In the same way, we can train ourselves to face the hardest things, when most people would turn away or quit. It just takes some training. The thing that makes us turn away (procrastinate & distract) is that we don’t like the discomfort & uncertainty.

If we can train ourselves to get comfortable with discomfort … how do we do that? Here’s a brief primer on how to train (more on these steps in other posts). Figure out your why. Know your motivation. You have to have a reason to stay in the discomfort when you’re confronted by fear. Set a shorter term goal. Something a month out, no more than a few months. Have accountability.

When we’re not really committed to something, it’s usually because we haven’t really decided to do it. We get stuck in an in-between state, where we aren’t really sure if we want to do something, we don’t know if we can do it, we don’t know if we’re good enough. Instead, it’s best to just decide to do it. Make a bold decision to do it, and then commit to doing it.

It pays to have a good reason to do the hard thing. Something that matters to you. Something really important, worth devoting some time and energy to. Worth facing uncertainty & discomfort. When you get confronted by fear, uncertainty, discomfort … you’ll want to turn away, to run. It’ll feel justified, and then you might make yourself feel bad about it. Instead, if you have a deeper reason, you can stay in the discomfort and not need to run.