Why would someone call a certain activity hard or a day hard, what makes something hard? We don’t like certain things in life and when they happen then all of a sudden hard comes to mind.

We don’t like unexpected change, so when change happens it is hard. One of the issues with my Parkinson’s is when I stay in one position for very long my muscles get rigid and then when I move it hurts. It is a major problem at night because when I move the pain wakes me up. I have semi solved the problem by moving and changing positions often so I don’t get froze up. I have even trained myself to role over, stretch my legs, or my arms while I am sleeping and I am able to stay asleep for longer periods of time. Same thing during the day, I get up walk around, ride my stationary bike, and then go back to writing or reading. I change positions so much now that I rarely experience the “broke the froze” as I call it.

For most of us “regular routine” is comfortable and when something comes along and messes with our routine it irritates us and life becomes hard. We like to predict with relative accuracy what tomorrow is going to be like, and when something comes along and messes with our security in knowing what the future will be like life becomes hard.

So we need to change our programming by our self talk. Variety is good, change is awesome, the challenge of finding new ways of doing things is fun, predictability is boring, comfort is for wimps. Try and come up with at least one new slogan that you will program your thinking with every day. Most won’t take the effort to think creatively to do that, it is easier to just stay in the rut, but those who want to grow, excel, and accomplish much will.

There are a lot of hard things in life, and probably everything in life is hard to someone. So many people say hard like a cuss word. One of the phrases that we need to say over and over to ourselves is, ”hard is good”. Try it, ”Hard is good”, once more, ”hard is good”, was that so hard (pun intended), one more time, ”hard is good. The goal is to truly believe it, not just say it. So many people get to the end of a day, heave a big sigh and say, ” what a hard day”, dragging out the word haaarrrrrd”. Winners and champions get to the end of the same kind of day and with a smile say, ”Wow, this was a challenging day, but I won”, or ”wow, stuff today that I didn’t do so well on, but tomorrow I will master it”, or ”Super, I haven’t had a day that pushed me to the limit like today did for a while, common Lord, give me another one”. Winners are always reminding themselves that this world is not their home, they are just passing through, that life is short and then we are in heaven. This world is not heaven, it is hard because it is supposed to be to make us like Jesus. It won’t be long and I will be in heaven, in the meantime run the race with endurance, and rejoice always. “Today was tough and I am so tired, but that is the best feeling in the world, means I did something that mattered”.

The problem is that all of our life the world has programmed us to be whiners. We have been programmed to believe and expect that life is going to get better, meaning easier, but in fact it gets harder. So we have to reprogram our brain and our self talk. It isn’t easy but it is very doable, many have done it. Keep listening to and monitoring your self talk, and correct it, change it every day. One person gets to the end of a day mentally beaten, the other person with the same kind of day is high fiving anybody and everybody.