There’s a hidden pandemic no one is talking about.
It’s the avoidance of doing hard things. Modern life has become so convenient and easy that any little bit of friction isn’t tolerated anymore.
AI has made it worse.
There’s no information you can’t get access to (except the UFO files). Amazon can get a package to you in a few hours. Uber can take you anywhere for not much money. The internet can connect you via DMs to anyone you could hope to meet.
Life has become so easy that it’s forcing people to default to NOT doing hard things. “This should be easy” the masses scream at any little nuisance. Without the friction that comes from doing hard things, we lose all meaning in life.
If you think about what sport is about, it all centers around athletes doing hard things while spectators watch.
If an NBA basketball game were easy and there was no friction, no one would watch. Only when a game has friction and the athletes have to struggle is it worth watching.
Bizarrely, many people haven’t realized this same phenomenon also applies to every other area of life.
What seeing hundreds of female breasts taught me about life
I’ve seen more female breasts than almost any other man.
I didn’t look at them because I was horny or a sleaze bag. I did it because it was my job. This is a job that was created for me by a friend to get me into music. Every Friday night I had to show up at the strip club by 10 PM.
I played music for the strippers and for the perverts who loved to watch the strippers. The night always started out as tame. Girls did their lap dances. Men watched. Then the men would drink too much. By 3 AM it was a sh*t show.
Men grabbing private parts without consent. Strippers slapping clients. Muscly security guards throwing men down the stairs while shouting “Don’t you touch her again, bro.”
The boob part happened before and after work. I was 17 when I took the gig (yes, I was underage and no one knew). The strippers saw me as their little brother. They’d push me into their female-only change room.
I think they loved me because I was the only man in the establishment who wasn’t trying to get in their pants. I genuinely was there to be a DJ and try and catch my lucky break in the music industry.
Chasing girls wasn’t on my to-do list.
Over the course of that DJ gig, I saw hundreds of different boobs and everything in between. It may sound like I’m bragging. I’m not. I’m not proud of that gig.
Working that job taught me how to do hard things though. I had to deal with drunk people, loud music, rudeness, and trying to get people to dance so they would buy alcohol which would please the strip club owner.
The shifts were long. I worked from 10 PM until 4 AM or later without a break. No food either. Then I’d wake up the next afternoon with a messed up body clock. Some weeks I would play both Fridays and Saturdays.
The hardest part is I didn’t know where it would lead. I wanted it to lead to a music career, but I’d never heard of anyone playing in a strip club then becoming a famous DJ. After almost 3 years in that job, I felt stuck.
I needed a big break. But it didn’t happen.
How I got a break is, I forced one to happen. I told everyone I knew that I wanted to play in the more well-known nightclubs. Eventually a family member met a guy who owned two popular nightclubs. I got introduced. I thought I’d made it.
But there was a catch.
The nightclub owner got pitched daily by DJs. He was too smart to just hire me. He offered me a job. I had to drive his clients, friends, and him around in his luxury car as his chauffeur. I basically had to eat sh*t and be his slave.
So I did.
For two and a bit years I did the job. I did whatever he said. And I became one of his closest friends. He trusted me with his life. And he heard the music I was making. Eventually he gave me the break I desperately needed.
But I earned it. I did extremely hard things to get that break.
For example, one of his clients demanded I drive him to go and pick up coke. I told him I didn’t get involved with drugs, and that I was not his courier. He pulled a knife on me, and told me to drive.
When he wasn’t paying attention I took a different route and pulled up outside one of our nightclubs. Security dragged him from the car and beat him until he almost died.
99% of other DJs at that time were not prepared to do what I did.
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Doing hard things is a massive cheat code your competition probably won’t do.
Doing hard things isn’t about being hardcore.
You don’t need to act tough or hustle 24/7. No. Doing hard things is a mindset. It’s a way of life. It’s looking at the world a certain way.
Social media presents so much of life as easy. On one side is someone like me who’s trying to encourage people to build traditional businesses and take their skills online. On the other side are people like this Instagram flogger, Ben, who shares videos of himself in luxury hotels, Mercedes Benzes, celebrity seminars, and homes he doesn’t own.
He gets people’s attention because he says “women shouldn’t work and their man should get rich and pay for everything for them.” His captions say “all she should do is cook and clean.” It’s Andrew-Tate-style influencing designed to be controversial and get people’s attention.
On the back-end he sells an easy passive income system. You set up some AI agents that run on auto-pilot and you sit back and become rich like him. Except this entire model is a scam and no one gets rich.
If you chase easy, and avoid doing hard things, you end up being targeted by these dip sh*ts and seduced by their easy lifestyle that doesn’t exist and that you’ll never have. Chasing hard things helps you avoid most scams and strategies that don’t work.
There’s no “done-for-you” system in real life. Just lots of hard things that turn into meaningful progress if you do the sets and reps required.
Ease seduces. Effort builds character.
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The purpose of life is to experience hard things.
We will all watch someone we love die, experience sudden tragedies, get lied to, get laid off, lose money, be betrayed, and fail more than we succeed. This is what it means to be human. It’s hardcoded in our DNA by mother nature from birth.
What creates a meaningful life is taking these hard things and using them as an advantage. It’s succeeding in spite of the hard things.
Yet younger generations don’t understand. They blame the hard things we experience in life as the reason why they can’t get what they want.
Political leaders then weaponize this learned helplessness and paint themselves as the heroes who are going to save them from these evil injustices.
Life is hard for you but it’s hard for everyone.
Nobody is coming to save us. The only way we can save ourselves is by doing hard things. I’ve found it’s better to try and fall in love with hard things.
Motto: “If it were easy everyone would be doing it, so when I figure it out, that’ll be my advantage.”
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Meaning in life doesn’t exist without struggle.
Outcomes feel better if we have to face pain to achieve them. Meaning often comes from memories you create or are a part of.
George Mack explains why weird behavior & doing hard things are crucial in life:
Normal behavior is forgotten. Only weird behavior survives.
Nobody tells stories of when you did the expected — they only tell stories when you did the unexpected.
Normal behavior costs nothing in the short term — but it disappears into the abyss.Unconventional behavior costs a social price in the short term — but the actions live on as story assets in the future.
1. If you pay for the bill at everyone in the table - the short-term reaction is shock and confusion. But in the long term, it’s everyone’s favorite memory of you.
2. If you travel across the world for a friend’s birthday, the friend’s initial reaction is: “You don’t have to do that” — but it’s the story they tell at your funeral.
3. If you’re 100% honest with your feedback on people’s business ideas, the short-term reaction is anger — but in the long term, you become one of the few people they trust.
If you study the biographies of the greats or attend the funerals of people you care about — the normal rational behavior is never mentioned.It’s filled with stories that make the individual unique.
It’s all the times they broke out of the median distribution of human behavior.If you want to create behavioral assets that tell stories for you in the future, you have to pay the price of appearing weird in the present moment.
Your unique brand is defined by your weirdness, eccentricities, and irrational behavior.If you remove them to fit in with the tribe, you remove all future stories and memories that tribe will tell about you.
Stay weird.
George calls this “weird behavior.” But what he’s really describing is the reward for doing hard things.
He also points out that being weird by doing hard things brings people closer to you. If you do hard things for long enough, you become a sort of unaccredited leader.
People look to you for guidance and advice – and even hope. That outcome creates even more meaning for your life.
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The only reason we refuse to do hard things is because we unconsciously believe life shouldn’t be hard.
When you make up your mind that this belief is bullsh*t, many of the bottlenecks in life go away. You’re suddenly free to think, dream, and create. You know it’s going to be hard and that’s the whole point.
I don’t ever want an easy life. The best education doesn’t come from a Harvard MBA. It comes from doing hard things. From learning the hard way. From being hard enough on yourself not to give into fantasies.
The more friction you add back in your life, the better it gets. If you feel lost, tired, or bored, you’re likely in desperate need of some friction.
Build a life based on friction.
Exercise because it’s hard and makes you sweat.
Start a business because it’s harder than a job but more rewarding because you own the outcomes and don’t get told what to do.
Eat healthy food because it’s hard to avoid food cravings and resist junk food.
Have hard conversations, because if you don’t, you’ll wish you did it sooner.
Remove loser friends from your life because they’re holding you back.
Consider having kids knowing one day you’ll be dead and they’ll miss you.
Take risks and be okay knowing that sometimes you will lose all (or most) of your money and need to start again
Doing hard things isn’t punishment. It’s the point.
I cannot stress this enough. Find a hard goal to pursue in life that gets you off your freaking phone.
Have we made life so comfortable that we’ve forgotten how to live?
