Life Isn’t Meant To Be Easy

One of the more damaging mindsets I was lucky to grow out of was the belief that life should be easy. This thinking is a common view today. We live in a world where the quality of life can be comfortable with minimal effort. This is a luxury belief that leads to destructive mental states.

How have I changed? Well, now I expect that anything worth doing will be difficult. Want to be healthy? That’s hard. Want to be successful? Thats harder. Want to have a thriving relationship? Borderline impossible. It takes immense hard work and sacrifice to attain or provide anything of value.

Taking the easy way out is high-time preference thinking. It’s a form of laziness. In the moment, the ability to be lazy may seem like bliss which can be attractive. Over a long enough period, that level of procrastination can stop you from achieving your goals or providing value with what matters most to you.

Happiness isn’t an end state. It’s not — and should not — be a goal unto itself. It is a state that we feel when making progress toward goals we find valuable, which is impossible without embracing the struggle.

Solving problems worth solving or, better put, adding value to your greatest potential will never be easy. It cannot be easy by definition. If it were, everyone would be doing it, and it would not be adding value as the cost would be near zero.

Shifting your mindset from waiting for things to be easy to embracing and understanding that fulfilling endeavors will always be challenging by default will be one of the better quality-of-life adjustments you can make in your thinking.