Difficulty is a Tool of the Masters

Yesterday, I wasn’t very good at jiu-jitsu. In one of my rounds, I didn't effectively control or submit one of my rolling partners and only barely got a sub on another match. I played a ton of defense, didn't get out of turtle, and while I effectively blocked passes with my guard, I didn’t sweep. I spent a lot of time in bad positions, not dying but not advancing either. Yesterday was a grindy experience and left me feeling like I didn't deserve my belt level.

On another level, I left the gym feeling happy, excited to practice more, and glad to have the opportunity

On the drive home, a little voice in me piped up and said, "Won't it be great once you can learn not to be in such bad positions? And even when you are, to tolerate and be happy doing hard things, instead of them feeling hard?"

This idea is flawed. Some things don't get easier. Every moment you are crushed beneath a 250lb man will be rough, whether you are a blackbelt or a white belt. Moreover, you shouldn't want it to be easier. You should want it to stay hard AND to be the sort of person who both figuratively and literally grapples with that difficulty. The context of grappling with hard things is the point! You want it to be challenging because it contextualizes every other event in your life and contextualizes you as someone who can handle doing hard things.

I’m not encouraging you to adopt the motto of "Go Hard, Be Hard!" Instead, I'm trying to point out that doing hard things is valuable, and you need to guard against the desire for mastery to overtake everything. Mastery can turn hard things into easy things.  But if that same mastery swallows up the benefits that doing hard things provides, then a critical value has been lost.

Needing to do hard things consistently is why we don't see many masters. The journey to mastery requires many, many hours doing increasingly difficult things. But that same difficult journey is why we see masters undertake tremendously difficult tasks. They've discovered that difficult tasks are the most valuable whetstone to sharpen their mastery. And like every other tool, masters learn to use the challenge to its greatest effect.

One more additional feature of doing hard things: there is a skill you develop when you face impossible odds. Sometimes, you cannot win. Sometimes you don't have the skill, the energy, the guile to overcome the obstacle. This, too, is a part of doing hard things and embracing hard things as your teachers. That failed project, that bad grappling match, that drag-out argument where you said the wrong thing, all lessons on the road to mastery. You shouldn't want to stop having those arguments, those bad matches, or project failures. Instead, you should want to win at the easy, basic, and fundamental challenges and proceed headlong into the pain of advanced problems.

You must hold two truths in your heart at once: I want the difficult to become easy, and I want to never cease to do difficult things.