Episode 67: Are You Making It Hard

Good morning, everybody! Welcome to The Work Of Becoming podcast. Today, I want to talk to you about July of 2022.

So, in July of 2022, I picked 4 core habits that I wanted to implement in my daily life, and if you’ve followed me for a long time, you’d know that I call this The Frequency Project. So, in July of 2022, I started another run of The Frequency Project, and when I look back, July and August of 2022 were the months in that year where I was the most consistent — and I’ll even say it — consistent with the habits that matter to me. And because of that, I felt amazing. I was getting up in the morning. I was tidying my house. I was working out regularly. Everything felt smooth. I was mentally healthy. I was supported. It was just an amazing time in my life.

When I think about that, when I reflect on that, one of the main sort of mantras that I focused in on at the beginning of that summer, at the beginning of The Frequency Project, was what if it was easy. And so, I wanted to talk about that today because sometimes we get caught up in telling our self that something is going to be hard. And so, that’s what happened to me recently. When January started, when 2023 started, I was very caught up in this hard-work identity of, like, “I’m gonna work hard this year. I’m gonna make it happen. It’s gonna be so hard to get all these vegetables in, but I’m gonna do it,” and I had grasped this identity of my habits and my daily routines being hard, and as a result, it was feeling hard. There were two weeks in January where I was like, “Why does every single moment of my day feel impossible? What is going on here?” I didn’t want to do anything that was beneficial to myself. I just wanted to lay in bed and pull the covers over my head and avoid life. I started asking myself why that was, and it was because I was viewing all of these habits that I wanted to do as really hard. And so, I was waking up thinking, “Ugh, my day is gonna be so hard. I have to do all these hard things.”

Then I remembered back to July of 2022 when I was asking myself, “What if it was easy?” I had this shift, and I actually talked to my coach about it because I sent her a message, and I was like, “Hey, I think these things that I’m struggling with, I don’t actually think they’re hard. I think I’m making them hard,” and she was like, “Yeah.” And she reflected back to me, she was like, “Listen, Karin, we know you have these skills because you’ve done it before. You can see in your past that you have evidence that you can get up early in the morning, and you can tidy every day, and you can get to the gym on a regular basis with little to no workout resistance. All of that is entirely possible for you, and you’ve done it for years so why are you convincing yourself that it’s this big, hard thing?”

And so, I had a heart to heart with myself, and I was like, “Wow, I’m really making this harder than it needs to be,” and I think there are good reasons behind that. If I look at my childhood and the way I was brought up, I can see that hard work was heavily emphasized, and I was told over and over again by my parents and by society that if you got something without working for it, that was like cheating. That was like a sleazy, slimy way to get things. And so, when things come easy to me, sometimes I actually reject that, and sometimes I actually try to make it harder because I don’t feel worthy of whatever result or blessing that I’m getting from whatever it is. I don’t feel worthy of the things that are coming to me unless I feel like I’ve worked hard for them. And so, that’s like a deep dive into my psyche, and that’s something that I uncovered in therapy, and I highly suggest that you go. But I can acknowledge that that’s part of my psyche, and I can still choose to say, “I’m gonna allow this to be easy for me, and I’m going to look for evidence of that.”

And so, for the past five days, I’ve been in that mindset, and I’ve been really directing myself towards the idea of what if it was easy to be in my routine? What if it was easy to get up in the morning? What if it was easy to get to the gym? Y’all, you will be so surprised because I have seen this in Alliance Clients that we’ve worked with too. You’ll be so surprised by what happens when you simply shift your mindset and you start to look for evidence that the things that you want are coming to you, that the behaviors that you want in your life are easy, you are capable, and it is entirely possible for you to get what you want. It is entirely possible for you to hit those goals.

So, that’s what I challenge you to do this week. I challenge you to ask yourself what if it was easy, and I challenge you to look for the ways that you’re making something harder when it doesn’t need to be harder.