Choose Your Hard

“Marriage is hard. Divorce is hard. Choose your hard.
Obesity is hard. Being fit is hard. Choose your hard.
Being in debt is hard. Being financially disciplined is hard. Choose your hard.
Communication is hard. Not communicating is hard. Choose your hard.
Life will never be easy. It will always be hard. But we can choose our hard. Pick wisely.”

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Beyond the Quote (336/365)

We’re wired to follow the path of least resistance. But, choosing to do what’s easy now doesn’t last. In fact, in almost every case, it only makes life harder later. It’s the principle of delayed gratification (more on this below).

So, while life can be easier from choosing the easier options, the truth is, it’s only a temporary easier. Experiencing the “hard” in life is not a matter of if, but a matter of when. And take heed, hard now and hard later are not created equal.

Delayed gratification is the process by which an individual resists an immediate reward in preference for a greater future reward. Most famously demonstrated in the marshmallow experiment, kids who were willing to resist eating one marshmallow right away were rewarded with two marshmallows later. And those same kids who could delay gratification in that small experiment, later went on to experience greater future rewards in life, too. Looking more closely at the examples listed from the quote above, this idea may ring even more true:

1) Marriage is hard. Divorce is hard. Managing a relationship for a lifetime requires a lifetime of work. If you’re willing to continue doing the hard work up front that a marriage requires, then enjoying the “fruits” of that relationship—and all that is intertwined within it—will be the greater future result. If you’re not willing to do the hard work up front and you choose to, instead, do what’s easy (take the person for granted; get distracted from responsibilities; not communicate; make no effort to nurture love), then the hard consequence of divorce—and all of the messy, complex, expensive situations that are intertwined within it—will be the harder future result.

However, in the case of being in a relationship with the wrong person, the instant gratification would be avoiding the hard conversations, masking the relationship for something that it’s not, distracting yourself for more immediate pleasures, etc. This, of course, would lead to the much harder future result of being stuck in an unhappy/ toxic/ wrong relationship. Delaying gratification would be the opposite. It would be having the hard conversation(s), seeing the relationship for what it truly is, and confronting all of the intertwined parts entailed sooner rather than later. This way, the greater future result will be freedom from that wrong relationship and the happiness and possibility that comes with it.

2) Obesity is hard. Being fit is hard. If you can discipline yourself to resist the temptation of treats now (hard), then you’ll get to enjoy the benefits of being healthy later (exponentially easier). But, if you’re undisciplined with your diet and exercise (easy), then you’ll have to confront the challenges of being unhealthy later (exponentially harder). Because the thing about resisting treats is that it only happens a few times of the day (not undermining how hard it can be). But, the thing about being fit or unhealthy is that it affects your ENTIRE day. Everything in life is made exponentially harder or easier when you are fit or unhealthy. This is where the underlying power in the expression: “Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels” comes from.

3) Being in debt is hard. Being financially disciplined is hard. Borrowing money is easy. Paying back the money that you owe is hard—and more often than not, frighteningly hard. Credit cards can have you spending hundreds, possibly even thousands in interest if you’re not paying them off every month. Worth sharing from The Balance: consider a credit card balance of $5,000, at the current average APR of 21.21% (as of January 2020), and minimum payment as 2% of your credit card balance. By making minimum payments only (easy), it would take you over 30 years and $21,643.83 in finance charges to pay off this debt (frighteningly hard). Which, by the way, doesn’t include any fees you might pay over the life of the credit card balance. However, pay off what you owe every month (hard) and you’ll end up paying 0% in finance charges (exponentially easier).

The hard in life is unavoidable. With each of these examples, we can either suffer the pain of discipline or suffer the pain of regret. And worth reiterating, as is evidenced in the cases presented above, hard now and hard later are not created equal. In my experience, the marshmallow test is indicative of more than just a person’s willpower—it’s indicative of how the “hard” will play out in life. Should you choose to eat the marshmallow now, you’ll get 1x the pleasure and 2x(++) the pain. Should you choose to delay your gratification until later and you’ll get 1x the pain and 2x(++) the pleasure—roughly speaking and in a completely abstract, illustrative way.

The bottom line is that an easy-only life is a myth. And trying to make what’s hard, easy, doesn’t work—it just moves the hard to later and usually makes it worse. Life will always be hard—we just experience our hard at different times and at different intensities.

Divorces can affect entire families rather than just your spouse. Being overweight makes every activity in life more difficult rather than just meal time. Being in debt can cost you exponentially more money than what you borrowed. We should learn to prepare for the hard, stop expecting the easy, and CHOOSE to confront the hard, today, for an exponentially easier tomorrow.

For, if there is anything I have learned about the future, it’s that tomorrow is already going to be hard enough. No need to compound any extra hard on top of it. Let’s pick more wisely, today.

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