Seeking Adversity

Coach Jerzy Gregorek has a famous saying: “Easy choices hard life. Hard choices easy life.“

The fastest way to lose in life is to choose the easy way in every choice you have to make. The easy way is always downhill, it works with gravity, and it draws anything flowing with no agency of its own into the deepest grooves, the lowest plateaus, and anywhere that will act as a reservoir of stale and rancid waste.

Going up on the other hand is hard. You need to do a lot of work, pay your dues, and work with your mind and body toward a path of excellence and mastery.

You’ll get rewarded in life in accordance with the effort you exert, not just in its sheer amount, but where you apply it, and the direction you’re aiming at.

With your health, it’s very obvious what you need to aim for. A mobile, strong, light, and sturdy body will take punishment, serve you well when you need to move, and keep your mind lucid and clear.

A healthy body will help you achieve your goals, and enjoy the fruits of your labors when you do actually win. It is the only place where you have to live, and as long as you’re alive you cannot move out. So you better maintain it well with the food you eat and eliminate bad destructive habits like smoking, and drinking. You must also give it as much sleep as it needs to be refreshed and rejuvenated. The more you take care of your body the more you’ll be able to push it hard when you really need it.

If you’re abusing your body right now please take my advice and stop it as soon as possible while you still can. Nothing ever is going to help you if you gain the whole world and lose your health. All the luxuries in the world are worthless if you’re sick of mind or body.

The hard work you need to do extends also to the mind as you also watch its own diet and exercise. Where you keep your attention, your focus and your mental energy is of the utmost importance. Your attention is the absolute most sought-after commodity in the world. Your smartphone with its endless stream of notifications and unlimited options for “entertainment” has been weaponized against you to turn you into a product.

There’s no such thing as free. If anyone tells you you’re getting anything for free, know that you’re going to be paying for it dearly. A free “App” or service basically makes you—the user a commodity that gets marketed, advertised, used, employed, packaged, bought, and sold to big corporations.

The first order of business you need to address is reclaiming your attention from all those who use it for profit. Get back all the time you waste and then repurpose it toward the advancement of your own cause by learning new information, getting training in new skills, reading great books, studying successful people, and reflecting on what you learn with writing.

Make a real effort into the improvement of your own mind and the results will be well worth it, especially if you’re building a strong healthy body along with it.

Seeking adversity is the essence of effective leadership. The strength and stamina you develop as a side-effect of putting yourself in discomfort give you expanded abilities for problem-solving, providing value, and helping as many people as you can.

The path towards greatness involves fighting many brutal battles from the front lines. It entails many difficult decisions, going through many pitfalls, making lots of mistakes and learning from them, failure, embarrassment, ridicule, and many humbling defeats. , and other people’s experiences. Sometimes you will find those who help you but other times you’ll have to walk the path completely alone.

Whenever you have a fork in the road and you don’t really know which one you should be taking almost always going with the hard choices can save you a lot of pain down the path.

Pain is an integral part of life and you’re going to go through pain one way or the other.

Going through something hard and painful voluntarily makes it easier since you’re expecting adversity. It is much more painful if you take the easy road and expect nothing but smooth sailing and get blindsided by the blows of fate coming at you from all sides unexpectedly.

The hard choice may be starting a new career from scratch with zero experience and knowledge. It may be quitting your job and starting a business or a creative endeavor. It could be starting a new relationship or ending one that is no longer serving both parties’ purposes. It could mean a great sacrifice of time, effort, and money towards something worthwhile.

Whatever you do, always try to do hard things because “Easy” never pays and it’s never worth it.