‘Everything you could ever want is on the far side of hard work’ – Tim Kennedy
It’s a pretty depressing idea, that everything we want is on the other side of a big struggle. That in order to achieve anything we desire in life we must first battle our way through to it. It’s not the most inspiring of quotes that’s for sure.
Or is it.
Think about it. Think about some things that you want.
That promotion at work is probably going to go to the hard worker. The dude who rocks up early, stays a little late and isn’t checking his snap chat all day when he should be working.
That weight you want to lose. It’s already been lost by the lady who put the work in, who tided up her diet and got herself down to the gym 3 times a week.
That six pack you covet, you know the one like the guy on Instagram who has a billion followers. That six pack is most definitely on the other side of hard work (and maybe some good lighting).
That relationship you want. The one with a rosy future where you’ve found your soul mate and life is rainbows and unicorns all the time. That too is on the other side of hard work.
For you see nothing truly comes without hard work. (And anything that does come without hard work is usually down to luck and will usually not hold the same value to you. How many lucky people have won the lottery and then blown it all in a couple of years? How many people have celebrated their high metabolism giving them an effortless six pack only for them to hit 30 and then rock a paunch for the rest of their lives?)
When we have to work hard for something we cherish it like a mother fucker.
The hard part? Putting in the work. As humans we are always trying to find ways to make things easier or make them happen faster. We constantly chase a quick fix, an easy route or a cheat to get us what we want. And if we can’t find a solution to our goals and problems easily? We throw them away and justify it as them being too hard.
Now imagine if we didn’t just give up on our goals, our dreams and our aspirations. That we worked at them, hard. That when they threw us a curveball we adapted, adjusted and continued on the same path. That we accepted that the journey wasn’t going to be as smooth as we would like it to be but that the end result will still be what we wanted.
So next time you find yourself thinking ‘this is too hard’ or ‘I give up’ just tell yourself ‘Everything I want is on the far side of hard work’. It might just spur you on to work that little bit harder, crank out that last rep, put down that bag of crisps or embrace that discomfort that stands in the way of you and your goals.