I recently had a conversation with a patient about how hard recovery is– facing challenges, embracing honesty– there’s a whole suite of difficulties involved. And in truth, recovery is really hard. But continuing to drink or use drugs is also really hard. I think about this a lot when talking about difficult, uncomfortable decisions that we must make in our lives. We think that there is an easy path and a hard path, but that’s usually wrong. Usually, both paths are hard, they are just hard in different ways.
For example, we will often hear that avoiding a difficult conversation is taking the easy path. In a sense, this is true. Having hard, honest conversations is… hard. Avoiding these conversations seems easier. The challenge though, is that living a life that does not involve hard honest conversations is also hard. It’s the kind of hard that creeps in slowly—through strained relationships, unresolved tension, and a growing sense of disconnection.
It's hard to stay in the present moment instead of numbing out with screens, food, or alcohol. Developing the wherewithal to sit with discomfort and feel the difficult feeling is challenging. Ostensibly, the easier path is to keep using our screens or our drugs. But living a life constantly distracted by a screen, or always turning to chemicals to numb feeling is a hard life. Never being present, never attending to what is happening around us is also hard– just in a different way.
It’s hard to ask for help. It can feel vulnerable, exposing, even shameful. But trying to navigate everything alone is its own struggle. Isolation wears us down. We miss out on support, connection, and the possibility of shared strength. Living a life without help often builds into loneliness and overwhelm.
It’s hard to create structure in our lives—setting routines, showing up consistently, doing the things we know are good for us even when we don’t feel like it. That takes effort and discipline. But living without structure is also hard. Waking up feeling lost, constantly putting out fires, falling behind on the things that matter—this creates its own kind of chronic stress. One is the hard of discipline; the other is the hard of disorder. Both take energy.
We don’t get to choose whether life will be difficult; we only get to choose which difficulties we face. The right thing often feels like the hardest thing. In reality though, it's often not the hardest thing– just a particular kind of hard. It’s hard to forgive. It’s hard to apologize. It’s hard to go against the crowd when we know something isn’t right. But refusing to forgive, refusing to say sorry, and abandoning our values come with their own kind of pain. Living with bitterness, carrying resentment, or ignoring our moral compass is also a hard way to be in the world. The choice is really about which type of difficulty do we want– the difficulty of standing alone or the difficulty of living with ourselves when we don’t? The pain of doing what’s right, or the pain of knowing we didn’t?
Some forms of hardship help us grow. They help us become more honest, more present, more courageous. Other forms of hardship leave us stuck—entrenched in patterns that diminish us, that steal our energy, that erode our sense of self. We get to choose which of these hard paths to follow. Do we want the pain of growth, or the pain of stagnation? The effort of building a life with intention, or the effort of constantly chasing? None of this is meant to be easy or tidy. There's a mess in all of it. By accepting that pain is part of the deal, we can stop wasting energy trying to avoid it. It is a liberating recognition. Rather than using that energy to try and avoid discomfort, we can use it to engage, to build, to change.
If we make decisions assuming that the easiest-looking option will not have difficulty, we are foolish. At the same time, the “right” choice does not really spare us the hard bits. Knowing this, we can let go of the fantasy that we’ll avoid pain, and we can be more deliberate. We can ask: what kind of pain will I choose? What kind of pain will I avoid? If I choose this discomfort, does it lead somewhere worth going? It’s not about stoicism or suffering for its own sake. Instead, it's about choosing the discomfort that aligns with our values, our hopes for the future, and our growth.
Cheers,
Doc
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