hard things

on recapturing childhood courage

A stroll through the Dolomites, Italy, July 2022

I recently read somewhere that the reason it’s important to do hard things is to expand your view on what’s possible. I know this is a generic take that has probably been said in different words thousands of times, but lately I’ve been really making a conscious effort to see life through this lens.

A mental model I’m using to do so is finding the right balance of order and chaos in life. When life is pure order/structure, it’s predictable and un-challenging. It’s not that structure isn’t difficult to maintain (it very much is), but too much of it convinces us that we cannot step outside of the manicured, curated bubble of experiences we’ve designed for ourselves each day. But if we add the right amount of chaos, we’re suddenly walking that oh-so-delicate line where we feel secure, tethered to the world, but are also pushing ourselves, evolving into someone new. On this delicate line of order and chaos, we start ‘becoming’ at a much more rapid rate.

I experienced this on my recent hiking trip to the Dolomites, Italy. I spent five days hiking through the mountains with a few friends, trekking up steep ascents with nothing but cables and ladders tethering us to the mountain (hello, chaos). Critically, I felt like I was just good enough to go on this adventure, but I still wasn’t 100% sure I could get through it.

I think these are the ideal conditions to be operating in: incomplete confidence in completion (because we’re aiming at something just outside our current ability) but complete confidence that the thing is at least worth trying. The more we do this, the more we think we are capable of, and thus, the harder the things we can reach for become.

Inhibitions around doing hard things are something that come quite naturally with getting older. Most people think it’s children that are scared of things. Haunted houses, scary movies, heights, darkness. But the people who tend to demonstrate the most fear and inhibition are fully grown adults! Most adults are quite scared to do things they aren’t used to—both physically and mentally. Hike a steep mountain? I don’t want to push my joints. Go to a painting class? I don’t paint. Attend a mixer with new people? I already have friends.

And hey, I get it. As we get older, it’s easy to sink into the status quo and let reality reduce to a reliable simmer instead of the rolling boil we’re used to in childhood/early adulthood where there’s always somewhere to be, something to try. There’s this distinct sense of comfort, glory, pride even, in a refined adult life tailored exactly to our needs and wants. I mean, I’m certainly guilty of it. This was me on Saturday night:

Isabel⚡️ @isabelunraveled

they say you become an adult when you turn 18, but actually you become an adult when on a saturday night you find yourself alone in your kitchen, sipping tea, baking chocolate chip cookies & listening to classical music in a state of utter bliss with no desire to be anywhere else

In adulthood, there’s simply less intertia pushing us out of our comfort zones. Unless we are proactive, we stop being regularly exposed to novelty, and as a result, we develop neat, comfortable routines that keep us healthy and happy. Comfort can be great. It helps us unwind, think, reflect, and maintain our well-being. But like anything, too much of it can reverse its positive effects. When we get too comfortable, we become resistant to hard things. Unusual things become an inconvenience, so we avoid them. Scary things threaten to fracture our protective bubble of comfort, so we oppose them.

Initially, we don’t realize how conservative we’ve become with our choices. It’s only when we get thrust into a completely new and uncomfortable situation (intentionally or not) that we realize we’ve become rather boring and under-stimulated in our little comfort nest.

This happened to me when, after the first few months of the 2020 lockdown, my friends and I went on a 3-week road trip across Canada, spending it mostly camping, hiking, and sleeping in a tent. I was shocked at how intimidated I had become of new and adventurous things that a former (more youthful, less comfortable) version of myself would have leaped at without hesitation. My thoughts were much more conservative, reclusive and generally fearful than they were pre-pandemic. I realized: holy shit, I’m becoming old, boring, and scared! Make it stop!

It was then that I decided that I never wanted to become someone who was lodged so deeply in their routine that they rejected novelty and discomfort.

I think this idea that: ages 0-22 are about figuring yourself out, and then ages 22+ are for settling into a repeatable every day you can tolerate, is a highly normalized and broken belief that a huge portion of western society holds. It’s a narrative we don’t have to opt in to. I am of the mind that we should continue to grow and evolve after we start young adult life. We should continue to find things that are hard and scary! Like scaling mountains, or asking someone out, or learning a language, or something else that you instinctively react to with: No, I am too old. No, I don’t “do” that. No, I feel like an idiot trying this. No, I’m so bad at it. If you feel like an idiot trying something, that’s great. It means you’re learning something new. Mazel tov! Keep going.

The mindset we subconsciously develop as we get older that “new is hard, and hard is bad” is cheating only one person: ourselves.

By resisting it, we get to experience life through the eyes of our childhood selves again—and how wonderful is that! Do you remember what it’s like to be a kid? Everything feels colourful, grand, new, amazing. You get huge gulps of adventure and novelty every day. And you’re growing so fast, and learning so much, and wow, even just writing about it fires me up. Why do we stop that as adults? Why do we stop pursuing newness and instead reject opportunities where we think we don’t know enough or aren’t advanced enough to do something? Like: that is the point! You’re supposed to feel like an idiot so that one day, you won’t.

But we seem to reject (or at least forget) this as we get older. We resist feeling scared, stupid, or out of place. But it is in the moments that we feel the most scared, stupid, and out of place that we grow, evolve, and become! That is the zest of life!

Related: I was catching up with a mentor who just retired and is in the middle of writing his first book. He was sharing how difficult the writing process has been, especially how people who barely know you get to peek inside your brain. He regularly reads my writing and told me how “brave” and “courageous” I am for sharing some of the stuff I write about.

Courageous? I thought, What’s so brave about writing about my feelings?

I was later talking about this with my writer friend, Mike, reflecting on how interesting it is to me that something I hardly flinch at anymore (publishing thousand-plus word pieces about my inner thoughts) is something that would make a 60-something-year-old man tremble.

“He’s a baby artist.” My friend said. “Even though he is a fully grown adult, he is doing something big, scary, and new for the first time in his life, and he’s going through the growing pains, fear, and discomfort that come with it, as if he is a child.”

I thought this was a phenomenal take. It reminded me that I, too, had been a baby artist once. The first time I published my writing online, I half-expected the sky to collapse on top of me as soon as the words were in the ether. Of course, nothing happened. I don’t even know if anyone other than my three friends who encouraged me to write read the piece, but hey, I did it. It was hard, scary, and I did it! Kudos, baby artist Izzy!

With each piece I published, the process became easier. I am now at a point where it isn’t the fear of judgement or perception that holds me back from publishing, but simply devoting the time and attention that each piece demands. I have already experienced my artistic puberty (is this a thing?) and am past the angsty teenage stage of worrying about what everyone thinks about me (when, of course, everyone is so worried about what you think of them that they hardly think about you at all). I am now onto the adult phase of writing where I just needed to put myself in the seat and get the job done.

But my mentor is still going through it! Writing is still new, scary, and hard. And I commend him for that. Because how many people, after age 60, go on a whole new intellectual adventure? I don’t know the answer, but my gut says: not enough.

I want to be a baby something at 60, too. And to do that, I need to keep doing hard things that make me feel small, unsure of myself, and insecure, because that’s how we GROW! And what’s the point of growing up anyway, if we can’t continue evolving as we do?

Anyway, I didn’t expect this piece to morph into another lecture (mostly to myself) on the importance of embracing our inner child, but it seems to always come back to that. So much of what we had figured out as kids, we forget (or reject) as adults, only to circle back and realize: our childhood selves had a hell of a lot figured out. I never tire of this quote, so forgive me if you’ve seen me mention it before, but:

“Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will.”—Charles Baudelaire

I’m saying: start being a kid again by doing hard, new, scary things that wake you up. Things that make you feel nervous and unsure of yourself (but also excited). Things that make you feel alive. Because doing hard things keeps us young. So, get on it, kid!

PS - If you liked this post, you might enjoy a similar one I wrote on re-discovering our childhood interests.