I had a therapy session last week that blew my mind. We were reflecting on how I often forget to acknowledge the difficulty of things.
For example:
Summoning a crumb of energy to workout at 6pm
Leading a presentation on a topic that's new to me
Saying what my spouse needs to hear even if it's hard
It's not that I can't or won't do these things; in fact, quite the opposite. Lately, I've been approaching these things determined to tackle them through all my fears.
Annnnnd it's going great!
Just one problem.
Without thinking I said to my therapist, "Whenever I do hard things and it turns out fine, I think it wasn't actually hard at all."
We both kind of tilted our heads like ??? There is something good there, but also something maybe less ideal.
Like everything I've ever accomplished just like, wasn't difficult at all...based solely on the fact that I was able to do it. This assumes I am in fact incapable of accomplishing any difficult task. Anything that seems hard was never hard in the first place if even I could do it.
But I just think.
Maybe things can be difficult
Maybe we can do them anyway
Maybe we can be proud of ourselves for the difficult things we do
Maybe we can do them over and over again and be less scared each time