365 Days With Self-Discipline: 365 Life-Altering Thoughts on Self-Control, Mental Resilience, and Success

Day 35: On the Value of Difficult y

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

—Thomas Paine

 

33

Easy successes may be pleasant, but if they’re the only successes you

achieve, you’ll come to expect quick, effortless results. Then, when life hits

you  hard  with  a  difficult  challenge,  you’ll  lack  the  mental  toughness  to

overcome it.

Moreover,  you’ll  never  appreciate  the  easy  successes  as  much  as  the

ones that required blood, sweat, and tears.

Does it mean that you should reject easy successes and seek the most

difficult ways to accomplish your goals? Of course not.

However,  you  should  make  sure  that  you  don’t  deliberately  avoid

hardships. Resist the temptation to set your aims low. Scoring exclusively

easy wins might feel good, but you’re limiting your potential that way.

Over the long term, make sure that you always have at least one big,

ambitious  and  demanding  goal  in  life,  as  that’s  where  the  power  of  self-

discipline shines, where most personal growth happens, and which delivers

the greatest feeling of having accomplished something worth doing.

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