On Doing the Hard Thing

“The master never reaches for the great, thus she achieves greatness. When she runs into a difficulty, she stops and gives herself to it. She doesn’t cling to her own comfort; thus problems are no problem for her.”

- Lao Tse, Chapter 63, Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell translation)

Never was so much said by so few words!

If you can really get this idea, I think everything else unfolds with it. You keep doing the hard thing without overreaching for greatness. You systematically convert all the causes of your long-term suffering into here-and-now pain, which can be faced and processed. If you live in this way, life gets better and better.

To unpack Lao Tse a little further: The master is not free of difficulty. The master honors her difficulties. She pauses and then she heads right in. She has made it a habit to always do the hard thing whenever it appears. Her life is one great problem, and so it is no problem. She never needs to shift mindset. She can even start to relax in the process, because she is always dealing with her problems. She can trust herself to keep showing up, and so her mind never needs to get ahead of her. She is fully absorbed in life.

Q: So how do we know the difficulties we are to face?

A: You fear them as they are painful or deeply uncomfortable.

Your difficulties might involve social anxiety, chronic pain, bodily symptoms, relationship conflict, taking necessary risk, getting help to deal with trauma, facing your death, etc. Deep down you probably know what your particular thing is that you avoid.

The hard truth is this:

The magic you are seeking is in the things your are avoiding.

This is true both in the outside world and in the inside world.

The more you give yourself to the things that you avoid, the more your path will unfold.

Do this enough and a mysterious tailwind will kick in. Your sails will be filled with the tao.