The Good Thing About Hard Things
For a disproportionately large period of my life I have avoided hard things. Things where I had non zero odds of failing.
This was easy to do because I have been living at the intersection of the world's infinite possibilities and my “Circle of Competence”. At this intersection, life is predictable and failure is improbable. But the tradeoff is that my imagination of what's possible is constrained by the boundary of that intersection.
The base assumption I was operating on was that I cannot fail within my ‘Circle of Competence’. Because by definition, I’m competent at these things. The years I spent doing this, I rationalized it as optimizing for success. However, looking back, all I was doing was running from failure.
Failure to me felt absolute. An ingrained belief from growing up with my typical Indian parents who disincentivized risk taking behavior. For their generation, failure was absolute. Opportunities were limited and so the cost of failing was high. However, the scales have since shifted.
In 2022, the increased frequency with which I failed at things made me realize 2 things:
1. Failure is like a monster in Scooby Doo - just an average dude inside a scary costume.
2. My ‘Circle of Competence’ was not safe from failure.
And so I was faced with a decision - do I continue constraining myself within my ‘Circle of Competence’ or do I risk non zero odds of failing to potentially discover new things I’m good at?
The decision was a no brainer. However, knowing in theory that something is good for you and overcoming the inertia to act on it are two very different things. So as a first step, I started experimenting with ‘zero cost hard things’ - things that have non zero odds of failing but no real consequences of failing.
I took up endurance swimming. I was super intimidated with swimming long distances so the hard thing I decided to do was swim 5km in 2 hours. When I started out in May, I had no certainty of hitting this goal and no real downside to failing (except of course the letdown!). The idea was to keep practicing without giving up when it gets tough. And create a safe space where I normalize failing.
I’m VERY close to hitting that goal. In the process, I fell off my training routine, messed up my shoulder and gave myself horrible migraines because I ignored hydration. But viewing these as avenues for course correction instead of failures was a helpful perspective shift.
The next step on this journey is to tackle a hard thing that has a downside to failing. This makes my palms sweaty and stomach queasy. However, no longer in fear but in excitement! Because the good thing about hard things is that irrespective of if you’re winning or failing, you’re growing!
