Top 10 Things You Can Learn When You Do The Hard Things In Life

It can be challenging to see beyond the hardship itself when things get difficult. However, pertinent lessons can be learned when you choose to do the hard things in life. 

Examples Of Hard Things In Life

• Being honest
• Being genuine
• Apologising to someone
• Facing struggles, difficulties and challenges
• Accepting our flaws
• Being courageous
• Handling difficult emotions
• Grief and loss
• Realising that we are not perfect
• Looking at ourselves (introspection)
• Becoming self-aware
• Taking risks
• Being proactive in our lives instead of playing the victim

What you learn through facing and overcoming challenges can go on to serve you well in your personal and professional life and facilitate the process of growth and development throughout your lifetime. 

1. Confidence: When you press forward and choose to pursue the hard things in life, it bolsters your confidence. Pushing forward despite challenges helps you to see your strength. When you know that you can move forward despite hardships in one area, you realise that this is something you can do in other areas of your life. This confidence can continue to serve you well in life as you encounter continual challenges and hardships. 

2. Face Fears: Along the same lines, facing the hard things in life can teach you how to face and work through your fears. It can be frightening to do something that you perceive to be challenging and potentially above your means or capability, yet, as you do the hard things any way you see, you can work through your fears and often find success as you do so. 

3. Resilience: Resilience speaks to the ability to bounce back from challenges. Essentially, it’s a refusal to allow the struggles you encounter to stop you from moving ahead. When you do the hard things in life, you are choosing resilience which can serve you well in other areas of your life. Being able to push through the hard things ensures that you are on a continual track of forwarding progression as you choose to continue to press ahead even when things are challenging and uncomfortable. 

4. Importance of Mindset: When you do the hard things in life, you learn how important your mindset can be to the overall outcome. If you go into the challenge with a negative attitude, the result will likely be poor because you’ve set a pessimistic tone. 
   
   However, if you go into the challenge with an optimistic outcome, you are more likely to experience a positive effect. Your mindset shapes your attitudes and behaviours, so your chosen perspective will lead to positive or negative behaviours. Thus, possessing an optimistic outlook is necessary if you want to experience favourable outcomes. 

5. Accepting Help: When you encounter the hard things in life, it can also teach you how to ask for and receive help from others. Often, we realise that other people can offer us support and resources to make hard things a bit easier, meaning we don’t necessarily have to struggle. Though asking for help can be difficult, especially for people who deal with pride, accepting help amid challenges can make life easier and help you get closer to your goals. 

6. Risk-Taking: Tasks that are hard for us to tackle include some measure of risk. Generally, we don’t know how these things will turn out or if our efforts will result in a positive outcome. 
   
   When we do these hard things anyway, we learn how to take chances despite what could be a less than favourable outcome. What often happens is that risks lead to rewards, but even in a scenario where this isn’t the case, we can learn from the mishap and continue moving forward. 

7. Strengths: Our strengths can be revealed when we do the hard things in life. As we face and work through these things, it shows us those skills and talents we possess that help us to overcome the hard stuff. Knowing our strengths allows us to understand what we can use in future scenarios to overcome challenges. We can go into things more equipped and more confident as a result. 

8. Weaknesses: Our weaknesses can also be revealed in situations where we do the hard things in life. Just as what we are good at can be highlighted, what knowledge and skills we lack can also become quite evident as we try to do hard things. 
   
   Though it is never comfortable learning that we possess a weakness, being armed with that knowledge helps us to figure out where and how we need to improve so that we can be better. 

9. Boundaries: As you do the hard things in life, you can also learn your limits. Limits speak to what you will and will not do and what you will and will not tolerate. 
   
   When you encounter hardships, you learn how far you are willing to go to push through the adversity and what your capacity is. Learning your boundaries is essential to ensure you don’t overexert yourself and helps you maintain your mental, emotional, and physical sense of wellness. 

10. Leadership: A final thing you can learn when you do the hard things in life is leadership. Other people are always watching you. When you press forward in the face of difficulties, you teach others how to persist similarly. By being an example, you can empower others to act in the face of challenges and overcome them just as you have. 

Final Thoughts

Doing hard things can lead to a host of knowledge and personal growth if you are open to it. Nothing worth having is ever easy. This is an excellent rule to live by. Choose to do hard things and see how you benefit from doing so.