Growing Beyond Comfort

Today is December 29. In just three days we will kick off a new year. Have you set big goals? I set a health goal at the top of my list: taking more time to prioritize exercise. I believe I can be successful. What worries me most is wondering what I’ll do on those days that are busy, filled with life’s activities . . . What will happen then? Intuitively I know I am going to have to work extra hard on those days. Here’s the thing: I want it to be easy, and when it isn’t, I tend to lose focus and allow my brain to talk me out of working on big goals.

So, I know if I am going to accomplish any goal in the new year, I am going to have to work on redefining the word easy when I am at home and at school.

Here’s what I mean. Think about this: were the last months of school easy? Of course not! Each year we have new students, new curriculum, new teammates, new parents, and new expectations, yet we seem to talk in terms of “This will be easy.” When it isn’t, we feel overworked, overextended, and underqualified. In fact, the work we do doesn’t come naturally to anyone and was never meant to be “easy.” It is when I am working on those hard days, expending a lot of effort on living, that adding one more thing feels too difficult. That is when my brain says, this is too hard. Wait for another day when life is easy and school is easy.

There is a lot of life, school, and work ahead. Brendon Burchard gives perspective on the work in his book High Performance Habits:

Effectiveness in life does not come from focusing on what is automatic, easy, or natural for us. Rather, it is the result of how we consciously strive to meet life’s harder challenges, grow beyond our comforts, and deliberately work to overcome our biases and preferences, so that we may understand, love, serve, and lead others.

My mantra is “Work is what I choose to do to be the best I can be.” Notice the word easy is nowhere near that mantra. In fact I am going to take the word easy out of my vocabulary when I am talking about work. Work is what we do. Work is hard. It takes focus, commitment, and deliberative practice, and all of that is hard. But I am not going to be negative. I am going to celebrate the hard. I can do hard work and I am going to embrace the work and feel great when I do.

The upcoming years will be packed with life’s ups and downs, joys and sorrows. And it will all take work. Life isn’t easy, nor is teaching. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that it isn’t easy, that it takes hard work, and that we can all do the hard work of bettering ourselves in our amazing lives and in the work we get to do. And while we’re at it, our hard work just may positively change the outcome for ourselves and our students. We have big goals.