'Always try and do it the hard way'

This headline stopped me in my tracks

Ryan Holiday is someone you should get to know.

Over 300,000 people subscribe to his newsletter ‘The Daily Stoic’.

Stoicism - an ancient Greek school of philosophy founded at Athens - taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge.

The more colloquial definition is the endurance of pain or hardship while, well, simply pushing on.

His most recent piece titled ‘Always try and do it the hard way’ stood out to me.

He writes…

“I was 90 or so minutes into being on stage for my talk in Sydney when I was asked: “If obstacles make us better, should we seek them out (or create them for our kids)?

Marcus Aurelius writes about holding the reins in his non-dominant hand as both an exercise to practice and a metaphor for doing the difficult thing. He wanted to get good at doing things both ways, at developing the ability to thrive in any and all situations. Naturally, we’re more confident where we are dominant. But the problem is you become progressively weaker in the hands or the areas that you neglect through this favouring.

Epictetus said when a challenge is put in front of you, think of yourself as an athlete getting paired with a tough competitor or a sparring partner. You want to be Olympic-class? “This is going to take some sweat to accomplish,” he said.

The point is: If it’s easy, you’re not growing. Not everything that’s hard is good of course, but almost everything good (and worth it) is hard.

Think about all the things you’re good at. There was a time when you weren’t good at them, right? When they were hard. But you chose to work at it despite that initial difficulty. Even though it was frustrating, even though you had to fight the urge to quit, you saw a glimpse of goodness, you clawed out a bit of progress, you felt a glimmer of confidence, and you chose to keep at it. To keep pushing. And you grew from the fight against the resistance.

Even more, you found something on the other side of it all—a you that you realised you didn’t entirely know and had possibly never met. You learned something incredibly valuable about yourself: you’re capable of more than you know.

I don’t just mean in big ways, but in small ways, too. Every day, you stand at little crossroads—decisions about how to do things and what things to do. Should you walk the 15 minutes to your meeting or take an Uber? Should you pick up the phone and have that difficult conversation or leave it to an email? Can you choose to do kick turns in the pool instead of push off? Can you choose to pick up a journal instead of your phone first thing in the morning?

As you weigh these competing options, always lean towards the hard one. Don’t be that person that Seneca talks about, the one who skates through life without being tested and challenged, who deprives oneself of opportunities to grow and improve.

Jump into the colder water. Have that tough conversation. Use the weaker part of your game. Take ownership where you can. Choose the more difficult option. Seek out the challenge. Lean into it.

Iron sharpens iron, after all. Resistance builds muscle.

You’ll be better for it—not only for the improvement that comes from the challenge itself but for the willpower you are developing by choosing that option on purpose.

Life is full of obstacles already, but if you want to be more adept at overcoming them, you should always try to do it the hard way.”

I can’t remember the last time I did something really hard. I mean, I do hard things but I don’t find them necessarily hard to do.

A challenge for the week. Do something the hard way. Doesn’t matter if it’s big or small. But get to Friday and say to yourself… I did that differently. It was hard. But I grew from it.

Let me know how you go.