A few years ago, I was in a cab on my way to JFK airport in New York, and I was lamenting to my friend Theo about how so many things seemed hard for me, and how some people just have things come so easy to them.
Theo stopped me in the middle of my rant and proceeded to call me out. “Mike,” he said, “this ‘story’ you have about things being hard for you isn’t really true. It seems to me that lots of things come pretty easy, you just make them hard by saying they are. What if you started actually owning that certain things come easy to you?”
As I heard him say this, I had a mixture of emotions and reactions. First of all, I felt grateful—I love having people in my life who are willing to call me out, even if my ego gets a little bent out of shape in the process. Second of all, I felt defensive and noticed that I wanted to justify myself against his challenge. Third of all, I felt a sense of fear and resistance to the idea of things coming easy to me.
As I thought about this more, I realized that my resistance to things being easy ran pretty deep, as I think it does for many people. Here are some of the main reasons I’d created and beliefs I’d held up to that point in my life to justify not allowing things to come easy:
Maybe you can relate to some of these?
Getting in touch with some of these beliefs was painful and liberating at the same time. However, it did help me realize how ridiculous some of them were and how much of my energy I’d been giving away to them in the process.
It’s almost like I was walking around worried that someone was going to say to me, “Mike, you have it so easy,” and I was preparing my defensive responses: “Oh yeah, well let me tell you how hard I work, how challenging things are for me, and how much stuff I’ve had to overcome along the way.” What’s up with this? It’s like I was preparing for a fight that didn’t even exist. Do you ever do that?
While working hard and overcoming challenges aren’t inherently bad, resisting ease and being attached to struggle causes us such a great deal of stress. And, in many cases, it’s totally self-induced and unnecessary. As we also know from experience, what we focus on tends to manifest itself in our lives. Therefore, if we expect things to be hard, they more likely will be. And, on the flip side, if we expect them to be easy, that becomes more likely as well.
In the past few years since Theo and I had that conversation, I have been consciously expanding my capacity for things to be easier. Ironically, this isn’t always easy for me, but I’m much more comfortable allowing things to go smoothly, and I continue to put my attention in this direction. Writing this book, in fact, has been much easier than I expected it to be and much easier than my two previous experiences of writing books. I caught myself a number of times thinking, Wait a minute, this is too easy; it doesn’t really count unless it’s hard and I suffer. As soon as I caught myself thinking this, I laughed at myself, noticed my tendency to make things hard unnecessarily, and challenged myself in a kind and loving way to allow it to be easy.
What if we simply allowed things to be easier in our lives? What if we started to speak about and own the aspects of our lives that are actually easy for us and even expected things to get easier? Easy doesn’t mean lazy, that we aren’t willing to work in a passionate way, or that we expect a free ride—it means that we’re willing to have things work out. We trust that all is well and allow life to flow in a positive way.
Our desire and ability to embrace ease isn’t selfish, arrogant, or unrealistic—it’s profoundly optimistic (in an authentic way) and can actually enhance our ability to impact others. The more energy and attention we place on surviving, getting by, or even “striving” for success, the less available we are to make a difference for other people. Although it may seem counterintuitive to us, having things be easy is one of the best ways we can show up for those around us—both by our example and with our freed-up positive energy.
As Richard Bach famously wrote, “Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them.” What if we stopped arguing on behalf of how “hard” things are, and started allowing our lives to be filled with peace and ease? While the idea of things being easy may not be, ironically, the easiest thing for you to embrace, I challenge you—as I continue to challenge myself—to take this on in your life and become more comfortable with it … maybe it’ll be easier than you think!