Hard Things Piling Up Means Good Things Are Coming

When the hard things in your life start stacking up—and I mean on every front, work and home at the same time—it isn't a sign that things are falling apart. In my experience, that is usually a sign that something big is about to break in your favor. And I've been living this for the past couple of months, so let me give you a reframe that's made it a lot easier for me.

These past few weeks have been a beast, candidly. A lot of hard decisions, a lot of hard conversations, a lot of hard actions to take, and not just in one corner of my life, in basically every corner all at once. Just to put this in context: we had a hard choice to make with an old dog that I loved dearly. We've been installing EOS in the business, which, if you've ever done it or attempted it, you know what that means. It's accountability charts, it's figuring out who owns what, it's getting the right people in right seats, it's making real calls on structure and strategy with the business. We brought in a fractional CFO to get reporting and books cleaned up and get that all right. We've made changes on the team. We've locked in decisions about who we serve as a market and about what we sell—which always comes with FOMO, by the way.

And then back on the personal side, we've been making calls about school for our kids next year, about building a specialized learning program for one of our boys (maybe both), and we've put a real family budget in place, which is always fun. I could keep going; this is just the past couple of months. If you own a business and run it, or you're the provider of a family that you're going to try to lead, you know exactly what this feels like.

Here's what I've noticed. Some people are wired, or have wired themselves, to hit these things head-on. And some people have wired themselves to kick the can down the road. Honestly, kicking the can down the road is probably the most natural move because there's always some discomfort attached to doing hard things—the uncomfortable conversation, the awkwardness of implementing the decisions, the risk of conflict, the risk of how other people are going to react or what they think. When it's coming at you from every direction at once, it's easy to see this all piling up and think that it's negative, so you start procrastinating stuff. You put off the decisions, you put off the conversations, you put off the actions.

But what I've learned in 45 years is every big, positive move in my life came behind a big decision, a hard conversation, or a hard action. The bold steps are the things that actually bend the curve on money, on career, on personal relationships. I wouldn't have my wife if I hadn't put myself out there and risked some discomfort in the short run. In her case, it took years; it was kind of a running joke—I pursued her for something like five years before she figured out that she loved me. Still worth it, but it was a lot of discomfort on the front end. I wouldn't have my business if I hadn't taken the leap and walked away from a successful corporate career and moved to Baja with no real plan to figure it out. I would not be in the position I am in today on every front—which I genuinely feel very fortunate about—if I hadn't made some bold moves and accepted some levels of discomfort on the front end.

Those are the leverage points. They are high leverage. The decision and the action are small relative to the return that they kick off later. And I would bet if you audited your own life, the areas where the biggest payoffs were almost always preceded by some kind of hard decision, hard conversation, or hard action.

Here's the reframe on this whole thing. When you look at hard things as just hard things, you end up procrastinating them because you're weighing the difficulty, the awkwardness, and the discomfort that you're going to feel today. But what you're leaving out in the math is the discomfort you're going to feel later by not doing it. Take the girl that you like: there's the discomfort of the first conversation versus the permanent discomfort of regret. Or starting your business: there's the real discomfort of the decision and the early grind of building the business versus the ongoing, permanent discomfort of sitting in a job you don't like, not making the money you want, not being as fulfilled as you could be—and that goes on forever.

So it's discomfort today or discomfort perpetually by trying to be comfortable today. When you treat these things as hard things, it's natural to avoid them. But look at what you're actually doing when you do that: you're trading a little comfort today for extended, and sometimes permanent, discomfort later. That's a bad bet.

The reframe is recognizing that all of these hard moments are actually moments of progress. The discomfort is a signal, and it's the thing that creates the big opportunity on the other side. You change the bet: discomfort today for extended, permanent comfort later. The interesting thing is once you flip it, you actually start to look forward to those things. When they start stacking up, you start realizing, "Hey, these are the moments that create the big changes coming around the corner." So you celebrate the chance to knock them out or knock them down, because you know the more of them there are, the faster you're going to handle them, and the quicker you're going to get to the place you actually want to be. The hard thing is the thing that precedes the stuff that you want.

Hard things piling up means awesome things are piling up, too. My only job is to take them head-on as fast and directly as I can so we get to the good part sooner. Anytime I catch myself putting off a decision now, I know it's a symptom of avoidance. And I know that avoidance is going to cost me what I really want later, and I'm going to live with some smaller amount of pain perpetually, which isn't a bet I want to make.

Every few months I record a voice note for my boys—something they can listen to or read later in life. This was one of those. As it came out, I realized this wasn't just personal; it's something I've grown a ton from, but it's got professional implications, too. I figured I'd share the reframe with you. I hope it helps. Adios.