Why Wishing For Easy Is Making Your Life Hard

The other day during one of my evening runs, I caught myself thinking: 

“Man I hate this. Why am I even doing this? Can’t I just enjoy my life? Why do I have to push myself through this? It’s cold and miserable. Nobody is chasing me, nobody is making me do it. I could just sit in my house and watch some TV or something…”

And as I observed my train of thoughts, it occurred to me that THIS was the issue right there. 

This desire for comfort, combined with an avoidance from pain or struggle.

Scientists recently discovered a part of our brain directly connected with something they call “the will to live”. 

They found that this part is active, getting smaller or larger depending on what we do. 

It is smaller in obese people, larger in athletes and in people who live a long time. 

And what they found is that this part get’s bigger when we do more things that we DON’T want to do. 

So if I go for a run, and I want to do it – this part does not increase. 

But if I go for a run, and I don’t want to do it, then this part increases. 

Isn’t this interesting?

When you do things that you “hate” to do, your “will to live” increases.

But if you do things that feel like something you want to do, this part does not increase.

My grandfather once told me how his day typically looked like:

He would work all Saturday through Sunday on the field, usually on scorching sun. At 7pm, he would walk back into the house, have a bath, eat some dinner, put on clean clothes, and walk for an hour to a bus station, where he got on the 11pm bus to go to work to work to a neighboring country. 

He would stand for the entire bus ride, which was around 6 hours, as there usually weren’t any seats available. 

When he arrived at 5am the next day, he would go straight to work, doing 8 hours of hard, grueling construction work. 

At 5pm he would get to his room, where he made himself something to eat and finally rest…

Only to do it again the next day, and week. 

This was the life of my grandfather. 

How about my life?

Or yours?

We can all agree that life now is much easier. And comfortable. 

I mean, I can’t imagine working the fields through the weekend, then standing for 6 hours on the bus only to immediately go to work the next day, with no sleep in between. 

I have to get my 6, 7 or 8 hours of sleep in, or else I’m cranky!

I can’t be in my “high performance” mode if I don’t get enough sleep, drink my protein shake, and set up my chair to be just right for me to work from. 

The thing is this:

An average life today is so comfortable, that it’s making us mentally weak. 

We have e-scooters, e-bikes, smart home devices, central heating, air conditioning, GPS, video streaming, social media, one-click shopping, instant delivery and more and more… 

All with the purpose of making our lives easy and comfortable.

And this precisely is the problem.

All this cushioning and softness has in turn made us unprepared for when real adversity strikes.

While I am not saying we should go back to stone age, I am saying that this mindset has penetrated the very fabric of our thinking.  

We started craving for easy, smooth and simple.

But this desire for comfort and ease is in turn creating more discomfort and pain for us in the long run.

I want you to ask yourself, where does your mind naturally go to fantasize?

For me, especially in the past, I would fantasize about a point in my life, where I “arrived”, where my goals were finally accomplished and everything was “easy”.

I want you to remember this word, “easy”.

• I would imagine making a lot of money, easily, with little to no hassle. 

• I would imagine having an amazing relationship, that just worked, easy.

• I would imagine having a great body, and maybe getting the compliments from others on how great I look, easy. 

• I would imagine my business being easy, clients being easy…

Everything just going easy. 

So what do you think happened when I was met with a difficult challenge or when something didn’t go my way?

Exactly, frustration, pain, anger, even hopelessness. 

The constant striving and wishing for “easy” inevitably causes an incredible amount of stress when actual challenges arise. 

The more you back away from the challenge, the more you fantasize the “easy”, the more stressed and unhappy you become when reality hits.

Think of it this way: 

The kid not wanting to fight in school always ends up with a black eye. 

But the kid who looks like he is ready to fight at any moment, rarely gets picked on. 

Life works in a similar way. 

The more you have a backing-off attitude, the more you wish for the easy, and for life to just “flow” without any struggle or stress…

The more black eye’d you get, and the harder the life seems to be.

But the more you are willing to face the discomfort, the hard, the challenge, the pain, the easier life gets.

One of the biggest changes I made in my mindset was changing what I fantasized about in my mind.

Instead of fantasizing about that moment when I would arrive and everything would just flow…

I started fantasizing about the problems, and the challenges to face. 

I grounded my fantasy in reality and expectation of all the challenges that I would need to handle. 

I embraced the present moment of work, which was going from one step to the next, without any ending in sight. 

I wasn’t thinking about a happy “end” anymore. It did not exist anymore. 

All that existed was the present moment of “suck”.

Instead of imaging myself “arriving” and everything being “easy”, I imagined myself doing what I do and going through the challenges – forever. 

THIS was the end. There was no “easy”. 

As a result, by ditching the fantasy of easy, I became much stronger emotionally and mentally. 

I felt more prepared to deal with anything that could happen and dealing with different challenges became easier.

For example, in the past I was super frustrated with the bureaucracy and administrative work of running a business, bad clients, unfair advertising companies, injustice, and the every day challenges. 

Then I made a shift in my thinking. 

I started wishing that running a business would be even more challenging, that the conditions and bureaucracy would be even more complicated and complex. 

I expected things to be difficult, challenging, complex, unfair, etc.

And suddenly everything became easy. 

I was now able to deal with anything that came up, because reality didn’t crash with a pre-existing fantasy of how easy it would/should be. 

I now fantasized the situations being difficult, and in turn they became situations I can easily handle. 

So what is your fantasy?

Where are you fantasizing about an easy life?

Are you complaining or even playing a victim when difficult, unreasonable or challenging situations arise?

Do you wish for things to be different, and for everything to be running smoothly?

Do you wish for a happy ending, where you don’t have any problems and everything just works easily?

I want to challenge you to suspend that kind of thinking for just 1 week. 

Change it to where you are craving and seeking out bad, challenging and complex situations that you stand up to. 

If you’re hating a part of your life, or your job, or a batch of current problems, I want you to flip them on their head and instead of backing off, start walking towards. 

Develop what I call an “attack mindset”.

Put your mental fists up ready to fight. 

Fight you own mindset that always craves easy and wishes for things to be more comfortable. 

• Notice something you wish you wouldn’t have to do, and start doing that thing like it’s something you can’t wait to do. 

• If it’s going to work that you hate, start going to it like it’s something you love because it is increasing that part of the brain that makes you stronger. 

• If there is a problem that appeared in your life, instead of wishing for it to go away, attack the mindset that wishes for it to go away.

For one week, get tough. Stop being afraid of the fight. 

Start craving for hard, difficult and complex. 

For this one week, make wishing for “easy” your main enemy. 

For just one week, wish for things to be harder. 

And you will suddenly notice that you don’t even have to fight. 

What felt like a struggle before will now become easy for you. 

This is the foundation of mental strength.