FORWARD THINKING
Question
Why is life so hard?
My Perspective
Short Answer? Because you make life hard…
Your alarm snaps you awake at five.
Your body begs for the snooze button. Your skates and stick, already packed by the door, remind you that the ice time is paid for, yet the justifications to stay in bed flood your brain.
Either choice is hard. One means shivering into gear at 5:30, sore, tired, half-asleep, before sunrise. The other means rolling over, only to carry that familiar weight: tomorrow’s workout just got harder; you are already behind; what kind of example are you setting?
You cannot dodge hard. You can only decide which hard you will live with. In those moments I remember my son’s words: “It won’t matter once you step on the ice.” Once you start, once you go all-in on the hard decision now, it becomes much easier later. I try to do my future self a favor every time I face that choice.
The myth of “easy”
We chase shortcuts because we believe in easy: six-minute abs, passive income while we nap, a productivity hack that fixes everything. “Easy” always sends a bill. Skip leg day and the invoice shows up as aching knees, stubborn fat, or a doctor circling numbers in red. Grab fast food tonight and you borrow energy from tomorrow at a brutal interest rate. Keep choosing easy and life spirals.
Discipline hard vs. regret hard
Hard Now | Hard Later |
|---|---|
Logging every meal, hitting the gym, swapping soda for water | Tight jeans, low energy, poor self image, lack of confidence, and medical issues |
Meal planning on Sunday afternoon | Impulse take-out bills, freezer-burn surprises, sluggish afternoons |
Early lights-out so you can skate before work | Chronic fatigue, creeping weight gain, canceled hockey leagues and missing out on the fun |
Up-front database schema planning and indexing | Scaling crises, costly migrations, midnight outages that wreck sleep, re-factoring again and again |
Building and maintaining a design system | Inconsistent UI, duplicate components, weeks of rework before launch |
Five-minute daily check-in with your spouse | Growing distance, tiny misunderstandings that explode later |
Automatic monthly transfer to savings | Stress when emergencies hit, living paycheck to paycheck, debt |
Discipline pain is visible and measurable; it usually ends quicker than you think. Regret pain hides, multiplies, and demands payment when you are least equipped to fight back. It is almost always better to skip the debate, drop the procrastination, and just decide. John Maxwell calls “Do it now” one of the most powerful phrases. I once challenged myself to say it out loud one hundred times every morning. That practice rewired my brain. I still hear the phrase when I am tempted to delay the hard choice.
I still pick the easy path sometimes, and that is okay. The goal is to stack more marks in the “hard now” column than in the “hard later” column so the trajectory of life angles up instead of spiraling down. This applies to parenting, marriage, work, habits, health, spiritual life, everything. Invest in your future self. Most of the pain is in your mind anyway, so focus on the benefit and trust it will be worth it.
A four-step filter for every crossroads
Spot the fork. Name both discomforts. If you cannot name them you cannot choose them.
Map the payoffs. List the freedom discipline unlocks, then list the cost regret will charge.
Time-box the pain. An hour on the ice versus years managing chronic health issues is a clear trade.
Decide once. Remove daily willpower. Automate grocery delivery, schedule workouts with a friend who sends angry emojis if you ghost, or lock a standing skating slot on your calendar.
Two futures, one decision
Picture a tidy stack of meal-prep containers beside a greasy burger and fries. Both paths require effort. One asks for it up front with a cutting board and a little planning. The other asks later, compounded, in doctor visits and lost opportunities.
Hard is inevitable. Choosing your hard is optional. Decide once, automate the win, and let the habit run.