Turns out you just have to pick your hard.

Sitting around all day, doing nothing and having no purpose and wondering why you’re here at all is hard.

Trying your best and being consistently misunderstood and possibly failing when you put your all into something is hard.

If you have no ambition and you don’t take care of yourself and you treat others poorly, life is hard.

If you strive for excellence and treat yourself well and help others, life is hard.

One leads to regret and ill health. The other leads to fulfillment of your purpose and achievement of your goals.

One way allows stagnation to continue, the other leads to growth and progress.

Either way, life is hard.

It’s a binary choice; do or do not. (Apologies to Yoda.)

If You Refuse To Choose

…you still have made a choice (as Neil Peart wrote). This is crucial for you to understand:

There is no such thing as not making a decision about what to do with your life. You are either working to make it better or watching it get worse.

There are no exceptions.

This truth has spawned many memes, clichés and ad campaigns:

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

“Cancer cures smoking.”

My latest take on this, to a friend: “If you think good food, vitamins and a gym membership cost too much, wait till you see what they are charging for ICU beds these days…”

This is really all a matter of physics. Your life, your mental and physical health, are entropic. All systems trend towards disorder and chaos over time. You can either choose the hard reality of watching it fall apart, or the hard reality of working to keep it together.

Maybe that’s why we say things like, “I have to get myself together,” and “Get it together, man!”

So why don’t we choose the least painful path?

What Do You Have To Lose?

Seriously, let’s put this in pragmatic terms. What do you have to lose by trying to “get yourself together,” to better your life and improve your health and increase your knowledge? Why not set goals and then pursue them?

For most people, the answer is as old as consciousness: we fear the unknown.

You could lose your fear of relationships. But “what if” you get hurt again?

You could lose your poverty. But “what if” my business idea fails?

Hell, you could lose that extra 50 pounds that magically appeared after high school. But “what if” I cant stick to my diet and exercise regime?

This is why it is so important to realize that indecision is a decision, after all. We fear doing things differently, but don’t think about the fact that what we are not doing is usually scarier.

What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

The way to defeat the fear of the unknown is to think it through and consider, in realistic terms, the worst that could happen.

What is the worst that can happen if you blow your diet and eat that entire cheesecake? Just start it again the next day.

"Getting an education takes SO LONG!" You are going to be here, doing something 4 years from now anyway. Do you want to be in a better place by then?

"What if the people in my yoga class laugh at me?" Look around. Many of them are in no better shape than are you. And all of them were beginners, at some point.

And then, think about the worst that will happen if you decide to do the same thing you are doing now.

How will your health be in 10 years? In 20?

Will you be happy with your finances if you do nothing to improve them?

If you don’t learn how to maintain a meaningful relationship, and then have the hard conversations that are necessary, how will your current partnership go? How about the one after that?

Pick Your Hard

Invent your own sense of purpose, and don’t let anything stop you. You have one shot at life; own it and live it your way.

Oh, and one other thing: START NOW.



To learn more about how to use these concepts or to inquire about working with me, you can contact me on the Hardcore Happiness website, the comments section on my Substack or Medium accounts or The Authentic Life Blog page. If you have found value in this article, follow my Instagram account for daily insights, or my X account for occasional tweets. To support this community, you can Buy Me A Coffee or donate through my Patreon account.

- JWW