Do Hard Better
"It will never get easier. What happens is you handle hard better."
Kara Lawson
Kara Lawson, Head Women’s Basketball Coach at Duke University, delivered a moving speech to her team about life that went viral on social media in 2022. Her message was this - everyone expects sports, life, and work to get easier. But the truth is, “It will never get easier. What happens is you handle hard better.”
Her words resonated with me so deeply. In my life, I’ve found that at times I’ve waited for things to get easier; the workouts, the long days, the back to back to back meetings, the mom life. But what has actually been happening all this time is that I’ve been learning how to handle hard better. I have been evolving, transitioning, and becoming better everyday.
I have conversations with clients all the time about how we wake up each day to a new person, but not in the obvious ways. We are new in subtle ways; ways no one else can see. Let me explain.
Each day is filled with experiences; at school, at practice, at games, at work, at home. We make decisions in the moment to problem solve and to learn. For example, let’s say you and your team practiced a new defensive tactic that day at training. You practiced this from the perspective of the team as a whole, as well as each individual responsibilities - including your own role - within the new tactic. It was challenging, but overall it was a great practice and you and your team made some great improvements.
While we sleep each night, our brain processes all those experiences and it evolves. As a result, we wake up as a new version of ourselves because of the learning and adapting and evolving that resulted from the experiences the day before. And because of this incremental growth, we are adapting to do hard better.
An analogy that helps me understand this concept relates to running. For years, I had no interest in running very far - long distance freaked me out. Influenced by my family, I realized I wanted to embark on the challenge of running a half marathon. I invested in a training plan book that took a step by step approach to increasing my mileage, and it got physically easier and easier each week. I realized my expectations were wrong in thinking that all of a sudden I would just go out and run 13 miles. I soon began to look forward to my long Saturday runs. I improved incrementally, one step at a time.
Along with adapting to do the physically hard better - the longer runs - my mentality around doing running also improved. I became less focused on the fear I once had about longer runs, and more focused on my training and the incremental progress I made each week. I practiced controlling my mind when things got tough by focusing on progress and effort over outcome. The running never really got easier, I simply learned to do the hard parts better.
That lesson has stayed with me ever since, and when I reflect on it, I realize that I’ve been learning to do hard better my whole life. We all have! The key is how we approach what we perceive to be hard, and being able to make adjustments along the way.
To learn more about how to do hard better in your life, reach out to MFP and let’s get started!
To see full clip by Coach Kara Lawson, click Kara Lawson: Handle Hard Better
