Hard things, good people

life on the edge

Apr 01, 2023

Yosemite National Park (Half Dome) — June 2017

"Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life." — Jerzy Gregorek

On the first of every month, I dive headfirst into the balmy 50°F San Francisco Bay with friends to mark the start of a new month and reset our intentions for the next 30 days.

Growing up, I had an aversion to cold water, always opting to lounge on the beach rather than submerge myself in water. Naturally, I gravitated towards the more comfortable option (being warm, soaking up the sun) over the uncomfortable alternative of being wet and cold. In daily life, I treaded outside my comfortable zone every so often, but being a kid was largely about going with the flow and not making waves.

For years, I rode the roller coaster of retreat and avoidance, often talking myself out of having hard conversations or suppressing my desire to take on something greater (physically and mentally) for fear of failure. Comfort was found in the easy route — or so I thought.

Then in my early 20s, something started to change within me. Life was "fine" by all accounts, but it felt lacking. I began questioning the prescribed path for a twenty-something working in finance, craving a deeper level of fulfillment in life and work. Around this time, I found myself traveling more, particularly to US national parks, a natural outlet for getting out of my bubble. I didn't know it at the time, but embarking on my first few epic national park hikes charted the course for pushing myself to explore my edges.

When I think about my peak life moments, most of them come into view starting around this time and into present day. Every single memory is associated with doing a hard thing — something I didn't think would be possible for me to accomplish — with people I admire and respect.

Four of my favorite physical feats:

Hiking Half Dome in Yosemite: hiking 15+ miles with a childhood best friend
Running the Boston Marathon: running 26.2 miles through the city I loved with a community of runners representing the Martin Richard Foundation
Riding Tioga Pass: cycling 60+ miles gaining ~5000ft in elevation with my now husband and our best friends
Cold plunging at Grinnell Glacier: running into nearly freezing glacial lake with my colleagues at Levels

My ultimate favorite feat was physical, mental, and emotional all wrapped up in one: moving to San Francisco. After spending most of my life on the east coast, something within me felt called to move out west. Through trusting my intuition and sheer force of will, I slogged through job application after job application, rejection after rejection, until finally, everything fell into place.

There's a cliché quote attributed to Nelson Mandela that goes, "It always seems impossible until it's done." Each of these experiences (and many others) felt impossible at one point in my life, but by putting in the hard work and betting on myself, I've learned to set myself free from the limiting beliefs that have tied me down. Had I not pushed myself beyond what I thought were my limits, I would've never experienced some of my favorite memories. The courage to press on in the face of fear and doubt has compounded my confidence over time to recognize that I could do more, be more.

I've learned to love the beauty in hard things. So much so that I now cultivate experiences that allow me to build my hard things muscle systematically. I embrace doing things that scare me out of my comfort zone like running into the Bay at sunrise to start off every month when old me would've rather been sleeping in, wrapped up in blankets. Actively pursuing challenges allows us to build the resilience we may one day need to draw on for hardships in our lives that we have no control over.

The exhilarating thing about breaking boundaries is the sense of freedom that comes with rewriting my own narrative. Every time I summit one (seemingly insurmountable) mountain, I come face to face with a higher peak. These days, I've learned to look back often and appreciate how far I've come. The new peaks that emerge in the horizon no longer send me into a tailspin — now, I lean into them with the recognition that the journey is really about walking towards who I aspire to become.

If you've made it this far, I hope to leave you with one parting call to action: go out there, do the hard thing, and explore the edge of who are you and all that you can be.