Most people think they want an easy life.
Easy job
Easy money
Easy relationships
Easy body
Easy everything
It comes in different flavors, but it's the same thing: comfort.
Here's the problem. When you look back on your life with pride, it's never about the easy parts. It's about the hard things that you persevered through or overcame:
The fourteener you almost quit on
The season you didn't make the team and trained anyway
The bully you finally stood up to
The degree you dragged yourself across the finish line for
The kid you stayed up all night raising
The business that nearly broke you
We've been optimizing for ease for a long time.
Our grandparents had harder lives. Illness was worse, travel was worse, communication was worse, income was worse, housing was worse. Almost everything was worse. And yet somehow we're now softer.
I'm not above this. I optimize for easy too. But I'm starting to think that avoiding hard things on purpose is a mistake.
Yesterday I did my first ice bath, below freezing, like 30-degree salt water bullshit (full transparency, it was just the closest one to the sauna). Motherfucker, it was cold!
I did 25 seconds. I thought I was gonna die. Got out and still wanted to die, and then about a minute later I felt fucking incredible!
You don't do hard things because they're comfortable, you do them because of who you become on the other side.
For most of human history, survival was hard; every day demanded something from you physically, mentally, and emotionally. Now we can engineer almost all discomfort out of our lives.
Climate control
Food delivery
Streaming
Instant validation
Comfort at scale - but that's the trap
One of my friends is training for a half Iron Man and an 80km trail race at the same time. I asked him why. He said, "When I'm at the outer limits of my physical and mental capabilities, fighting to survive the thing I signed up for, I feel incredible.”
At first, I thought that was insane, but the more I think about it, especially zooming out 20,000 or 50,000 years, it makes perfect sense.
We are wired for challenge.
The few truly hard things I've done are the things that built me. Hard seasons shape you in ways comfort never will.
I'm not wishing hardship on you or telling you to go sign up for an Iron Man. I'm just saying, do hard things on purpose.
Not because suffering is noble, not because struggle is trendy, but because difficulty forces you to meet yourself and makes you better for it.
So run the race
Start the company
Have the hard conversation
Move to the new city
Build the thing that scares you
You don't actually want an easy life. You want a life you're proud of when you look back on it.
Those are not the same thing.
-Mack
Disagree with me in the comments.