Today, I had to make a hard decision and follow through on it.
And it’s really hit home for me: living my best life doesn’t mean things are easy. It means that I can make decisions, even hard ones, stand behind them, and know that I’m trying to do what’s right, not necessarily what’s easy.
Sometimes we don’t know what we need to do until we’re fully in the moment. Having foresight on everything is impossible and would be utterly exhausting anyway. But, when that moment arrives (as they inevitably always do), having the ability to trust your gut, embrace the temporarily hard—but long-term best—thing to do, is a sign that you are, in fact, living your life. Not someone else’s. Not some false set of expectations or through other people’s opinions.
By and large, I don’t shelter my kids from these moments. I believe it’s important to model the decision-making process, to show them adults don’t always magically, instantly have the answer. And sometimes the answer is doing a hard thing. My hope is that by seeing me process and struggle with something, their own expectations will adjust accordingly. Perhaps they will give themselves some time and space (and a little slack) to figure out what to do in their own moments and to trust their gut, especially when it would be easier to default to the easy thing.
Glennon Doyle is right, in observing we can do hard things. Before that, though, we need to know it’s okay to do the hard thing—that we each have permission to live our own life and make those decisions in the first place. Living by other people’s expectations can make it easier to avoid the hard stuff. But after the hard stuff is often where life’s magic happens.
If you find yourself struggling with hard things, it might be worth considering: Have you given yourself permission to do them?