Doing the difficult thing

It’s taken me 31 days into the new year to get my resolutions done and after mulling over it for an entire month, I’ve come up with a grand total of 1 resolution. I know, I astound myself with my productivity sometimes. Well, here it is.

DO THE DIFFICULT THING. 

Let me preface this by saying that having to do the difficult thing sucks. That’s why it’s called the difficult thing.

Nobody wakes up one morning and says “Aha, today, I’m going to make my life more difficult. I’m supposed to wrestle a minotaur, but that’s too easy. Let’s get that minotaur really upset first by stealing her baby and while we’re at it, throw in a second hungry minotaur that hasn’t eaten for 2 weeks.”

Unless you’re that sort of person, then much respect to your badassery.

But not me. I’m naturally predisposed to doing the easy thing. In fact, the easier, the better. Which is why I spend so much time lying on the floor while pretending to play with the kids. I like to ease into things, tackle the easy stuff first before working up the nerve to do something more intense, all the while hoping that the difficult thing will magically disappear and I’ll end up not having to do it after all.

Except that the difficult thing is always going to be sitting there mocking us till we get it done. And the longer we leave it, it gets bigger and more difficult. Sometimes, I accumulate so many difficult things to do that it just starts to look impossible.

Until we decide to just do it.

Take a deep breath, have a coffee, then grab the minotaur by the horns and wrestle the shit out of it.

So this year, I’m doing it the other way around. Do the difficult thing first. Get the hard work out of the way before doing the lying on the floor thing. Or as we Chinese like to say, First Bitter, Then Sweet.