How to make hard things fun

The author climbing in São Tomé / Photo: Kupferman Photography

Think about something meaningful you’ve accomplished in your life. It could be a professional success, an athletic win, or something in your personal life.

On a scale of 1–10, how much effort did that accomplishment require? Were there times when it wasn’t “fun”? Were there times when you wanted to give up?

I’m guessing your answer is “yes.” This is certainly true for every big accomplishment I’m proud to look back on.

One experience that comes to mind is a rock climb I did in Mexico in January 2017. It was the hardest climb I had tried to date, and I had just two weeks to rehearse the moves and build up the fitness to climb it in a single push.

I enjoyed the climbing, but the trip wasn’t easy. Yes, I was physically exhausted, but the hardest part was mental. I had put a lot of pressure on myself by committing the entire trip to a single route instead of just doing easier climbs. Time was also short. After two weeks I would fly home, either successful or empty handed.

We went out to the cliff day after day. I would try, fall, and try again to learn the moves better. At night the sequences of moves would play over and over in my head, making it hard to sleep. I would lie in bed, tense and sweating, wondering if the whole pursuit was a waste of time. I was a nervous wreck.

Two days before the end of the trip I completed the climb. At the time, it was my proudest athletic accomplishment to date. Years later I can see how that climb was a turning point for me. Success expanded my sense of what’s possible for me as a rock climber.

All meaningful moments are the sum of hard ones, but we tend to forget this. It is true in athletics but also in other areas of life.

I think about the days and weeks I spent second guessing my choice to start a coaching business, or dreadful hours spent writing my master’s thesis in grad school. Most moments felt miserable, but the end results — published research, a business I love — are the things I’ll be proudest to look back on.

Most of the time you spend working toward something great will not feel “fun” or “easy.” But if you care about the end result, the process can become meaningful. You can learn to love the fact that it feels hard or impossible in the moment.

“But how?!” you might be asking.

Learning to love challenges starts with realizing that hard moments means you’re on the right path, not the wrong one. Often we give up because we think it shouldn’t be so difficult. Just knowing this will give you a solid head start.

You also need a clear end goal you truly care about. When you feel like giving up, remember what you’re working toward. Write down the result you’d love, why it would be meaningful, or the contribution you hope to make.

Finally, you have to want to love the process. You have to be more interested in making it meaningful than in slogging through it. You have to be tired of complaining, tired of struggling, and tired of giving up on yourself.

So this is my invitation: fall in love with the process. Learn to savor the hard workouts, the times you mess up, the phone calls you don’t want to make, and the anxiety that shows up when you sit down to write.

These hard moments will be most of the time — they are the rule, not the exception. If you can’t learn to love the process, why bother doing hard things?