How Do You Get Yourself to Do Hard Things?

“I’m the kind of person who does hard things,” she said proudly. “One more time,” I said. “I’m the kind of person who does hard things!” she roared again, beaming with a glow of confidence and the flushed red cheeks to prove it. But this was not how it started out when I picked her up from school. “I don’t want to go today, Daddy,” she blurted out as I handed her her gym bag. “I need to go to the bathroom. Can we just go home?” Her inner lawyer was already looking for loopholes for how to get out of it. For months now, my daughter has wanted to level up her gymnastics game. So she and I came up with a plan of going to our local YMCA together a few times a week to work on specific gymnastics skills so that she can reach her goal of advancing from the intermediate class to the advanced class. After her objections that day, we did end up getting there and after our session, she felt that rush of joy that always comes with incremental mastery. But, as is often the case, there was a moment in which we almost didn’t make it. It’s these lynchpins in our own lives that are critical to getting us over the finish line. <a href="https://medium.com/change-your-mind/how-do-you-get-yourself-to-do-hard-things-7e704f9b385">Read More</a>