10 Ways to Do Hard Things

Take time to both forge forward and meditate. Building resilience takes time and practice. There is a time to forge ahead, to push ourselves past our comfort zones, to keep up the pace. And there is a time to rest. To meditatively calm your body, heart and mind and reenergize yourself.

Find community. You can go further with others. Who in your life can help you both forge ahead and take meditative pauses? Maybe it's an individual or a group of friends. Maybe it's a team, colleagues, book club, study group or Bible study. Maybe it's a group like our coaching groups, specifically set aside for group connection and support.

Pause and rest and reflect on what you have and where you’ve been. When the list is long or the path to where you want to go is long, it's important to treat it like a marathon, not a sprint. Pace yourself, and take intentional time to pause, look back, and reflect. Celebrate how far you've come. Consider how you felt before this milestone, how you felt during the mile, and how you feel now. What are the differences? What have you learned about yourself?

Let each success build subconscious self-confidence. The more we find success and pause to let it sink in, the more we rewire our brains to believe we "can" instead of "can't".

Strive intentionally instead of just striving to strive. Yes, we need to work hard because success doesn't happen by accident. But we first need to determine what's most important to us, and put our resources and energy into that. Striving for what we think we "should" be doing might be burning us out and keeping us from gaining traction in what is truly important.

Keep curiously asking “What can I control? What am I going to do with this? What do I want the other side of this to look like?” The key here is to ask those questions with curiosity. There is always something we can do that will make a positive impact, but sometimes it's in a roundabout way. Keep curiously asking what you can do next.

Choose to not let the negativity steal your joy. There are bad days. There are really bad days. And those bad days come with negative, unhelpful thoughts that seem to have a megaphone in our heads. Choose to think about the joy and the helpful thoughts too.

Keep intertwining your long-term vision with your short-term vision. They’re not mutually exclusive and they need to work together instead of fighting against each other.

Be a disco ball reflecting light. That means surrounding yourself with people who shine, and intentionally choosing to absorb some of their light and pass it on to those around you. Positively impacting others boosts both of you.

Keep calm and carry on because this too shall pass. Keep calm through meditation, reflection, support and choosing joy. Carry on, striving intentionally and forging your way towards what you really want, letting the small successes accumulate and make you stronger. Time will pass. This season will pass. What do you want to glean from it and what space do you want to be in when it passes?