“This Is Going To Be Hard.”

"This is going to be hard.”

“This is going to be complicated.”

“This is going to be a lot of work.”

These used to be some of my go-to thoughts about anything new, especially anything new at work. (Often still are, but I don't listen to them anymore). Notice the future tense. My brain decided things were going to be hard before I even tried them, started them, or began to plan for them.

So what? Why was that a problem for me?

Because if things were hard, I might not be good at them. I might be less than perfect. (THE. HORROR.)

Plus, let’s get real. Your brain’s job isn’t to make you happy and feel good. Its job is to keep you alive. A huge part of that involves trying to conserve energy - i.e., not doing anything at all that doesn’t contribute to your survival, much less anything that is hard or challenging. 

For me, those thoughts - “this is going to be hard” and its variants - lead to feelings like dread, overwhelm, and anxiety.

And you know what those feelings lead to?

Avoidance.

Procrastination.

Spinning my wheels.

Over-thinking.

Failing to plan.

Catastrophizing.

Finding additional evidence of how hard it is going to be or how much work it is going to be so that I didn’t have to do the thing. In a nutshell, because of that thought, I MADE THINGS HARDER ON MYSELF. And I set myself up for inevitable failure (or at least for not doing my best work) - the one thing I was trying to avoid.

If this sounds familiar for you, give these questions a try:

“How could this be easy?”

“How could this be easier?”

“What if this were simple?”

“What is easy about this?”

“What do I already know?”

“What information am I missing that would make this easier?”

“What’s one step I know I need to take?”

Don’t allow yourself to say “I don’t know.”

Once you present your brain with one or more of these questions and require it to come up with an answer, things will start to shift. Even if just a little bit.

Instead of looking for evidence proving why the thing is hard, your brain will start to look for evidence of how it could be less hard - maybe even easy.

It will start coming up with a plan.

And “This is going to be hard” starts to become “this is manageable.”

“This is manageable” might even start to become “This is easy.”

At least in part. Maybe there are still parts that aren’t easy. But the whole thing doesn’t have to feel so hard.

Think about that thing you are dreading doing. That you are avoiding.

What if it were easy? How could it be easy?