Doing the Hard Things

This summer I was fortunate enough to take my kids to Ireland and spend the month of August there with them.  As many of you know, my parents were born and raised in Ireland and so summers in Ireland have been part of my life since I can remember and now, wonderfully, they are part of my children’s lives as well.

Walking up the road to our home in rural Ireland

We always do a lot of walking in Ireland. We stay in our family home which is in the countryside, on the East coast of the island where there are beautiful views of the water as well as winding mountain paths with only the gorgeous green of the fields to look at. You see sheep, cows, and their babies, slowly shifting cirrus clouds on an often deep blue sky. The vastness of the visual stimuli is what really struck me this year and what made my nervous system breathe a deep sigh of relief. I felt it was what my DNA was longing for.

I have been reading lately about the difference between a walk in the city and one in the country. When we walk in a place with so much visual stimulation-signs, shops, honking cars, loud buses, people everywhere- we have to be on guard. You can almost feel the adrenaline still present throughout an urban walk. In contrast, the rural walk, with nothing to really see or look at, is a complete rest for the mind. I don’t have to attend to anything when I continue up the rocky mountain path in Ireland and so not only is my nervous system calm, but I have the opportunity to be with my thoughts, to let them rise to the top of my consciousness and percolate. Sometimes I can begin to see a challenging situation in a new light. Or sometimes just the act of that issue rising to the surface and then passing away is enough to lighten the load I may have been feeling from it previously. All this added up to feelings of monumental relaxation, freedom, reduced stress and a sense of joy and peace. I was more easily able to separate myself from the challenges in my life. It was as if I could say to myself, yes, those hard things/people/situations exist, but so does this body and this beautiful sunrise and so it’s all going to be ok. Yes! This is what I need in my life!

Sunrise in Ireland

So, when I came back to Chicago, I decided to continue my walks in nature with a view of something vast. I began running to the lake every morning to see the sunrise and I can tell  you that is has changed my life significantly. First of all, I have been toying with “hacking” my hormonal night-time sleep disruptions by adjusting my cortisol levels using sunlight. Basically, we want our cortisol levels to spike in the morning, not at 1am or 3am, leaving us unable to fall back asleep and thus exhausted the next day. This had been happening to me at least a few times each week for the last 6-9 months. Of course, herbs and acupuncture helped, but I still had nighttime wakings that were leaving me a bit brain dead and tired the next day. However, about 2 weeks into my early morning runs, my nighttime sleep regulated and because my cortisol is now spiking at 5:30am when I get up and start jogging and get the sunlight into my eyes, it does NOT spike during the night. I have re-trained my adrenals and cortisol secretions.

Secondly, I have so much more energy! I attribute that to sleeping better but also to running itself which is pushing my cardiovascular system just a bit more than it had been pushed with walks, yoga, biking, and weight lifting.

Third, my nervous system is so much calmer. There is something about running/walking through nature, at a time when no one is around, and landing on a beautiful, expansive, empty beach, to see an immaculate color display of light for as far as my eyes can see, that vastly calms me. When I arrive back home, an hour or 90 minutes later, and start to get my kids up, make their lunches and breakfasts, it’s like I have lived a whole lifetime already and that lifetime was one of peacefulness, calm, deep beauty, serenity and accomplishment.

Sunset beach walk on Lake Michigan

But FOURTH, and this is maybe the most important point of my run and why I named the title of this newsletter as I did, I am DOING THE HARD THING. It is HARD to get up at 5 or 5:30am when the rest of the world is sleeping to go outside and run. It is HARD to get to bed every night at 9:30pm so that I get enough sleep and will be able to rise at 5:30am. It is HARD to push myself physically, minute after minute until I reach the sand and the sunrise. And it is HARD to wake up day after day and do it again. BUT it turns out that doing the hard things has tremendous rewards and yet it is an aspect of life which we have in large part, begun to forgo. Our little mini-computers in our pockets prevent us from doing a lot of the hard things. We never have to figure out how to get somewhere anymore. We never have to remember a list anymore. We never have to recall a fact that was once committed to memory but we momentarily have forgotten. Instead of working through our mental files until we recall it, we just type it in and get the answer. More and more, people are not even reading because it feels too hard. Instead, we will listen and watch people give us the information we want, or more accurately, the information they want us to have.

It sounds like all the ease would be a good thing, right? Well, it turns out it is not. Far from making us happier, life becoming easy, only lowers the bar at which we feel discomfort. So it used to be uncomfortable to do the hard work of navigating somewhere. You had to get out the map, follow it while reading miniscule street names. If you were on a road trip, you were searching for the little green triangle which meant there was a camp site there but you had no idea if that site had any opening so you had to stop at each one and ask the ranger which may have taken you several hours until you finally found a site and pitched your tent in the dark. But then, you woke up at sunrise and saw that is was the  most beautiful campsite ever! It was pitched on the side of a wide rushing stream of crystal clean water where you spent the morning swimming with your boyfriend! Ok that actually happened to me, and it was amazing.

The point is, doing the hard thing leads to a feeling of accomplishment and THAT is where the joy comes. It leads to all  kinds of surprises which turn out to be even more satisfying than getting exactly what you wanted, when you wanted it. The latter it seems, leads us to just be more demanding. And that is also what I see happening to our society. We have become SO demanding. The internet has caused us to NEED optimization of all our decisions and plans. If we don’t find the PERFECT hotel in the perfect vacation city, and the ideal airfare, car hire, and activities, than we feel disappointed in ourselves, in our hosts, in anyone we can find to be disappointed in! We have a very hard time with tolerance these days and tolerating mistakes, or even tolerating mediocrity which, yes, sometimes does happen!

Doing more hard things- learning to surf in the Atlantic off the coast of Ireland- it’s cold!

So we  know that we feel good when we do the hard things and accomplish them and now we have the science to back that all up too. Another hard thing we did in Ireland this summer was learn to surf on the west coast in the Atlantic Ocean. It was really cold! But as my son said, when you catch the perfect wave, you feel like you are racing through a tunnel. Wow, that felt amazing. The best part? The sauna on the beach afterwards!

If you want to read more about doing the hard things, see The Comfort Crises by Micheal Easter. It is actually so liberating to start looking for the furthest place to park, rather than the closest. When we challenge ourselves, we raise the bar for our own discomfort so we can handle more. Making ourselves uncomfortable, makes us more comfortable in more situations. And the opposite is also true- the more comfortable we make ourselves, the less comfortable we are in more situations.

…and then the reward: Post-surf, hot sauna on the sandy beach with cousins.

If you want to hear more about sunlight and cortisol levels as well as other ways to maintain your high cortisol for good energy in the morning and through the day, you can check out this podcast.  Have a wonderful Fall!