Hard Things Are Hard. Stop Expecting Something Else
The astrology the astrology the astrology.
If you follow any astrology accounts, you have likely seen just how tricky and big this week is. Literally, everything is in Aries, for the first time…ever. According to Chani, expect friction, “traffic jams of epic proportions.” I’m going to share a part of her transcript from this week’s reading,
“I need you all to lock in. This is not for the faint of heart, but for those who really, really, really truly believe that we can succeed. If we all focus, if we all stay the course, and if we all refuse to get derailed by whatever is going to be going on this week, we can move some very important pieces forward, strategically speaking.”
Now you know I love to bring you session themes of the week, and this week it was, hard things are hard, shitty things are shitty (the astros are astroing), and that my friends, is where the work lies.
Just like the astrology says, when things start to derail, when our plans don’t pan out, when things shift out of nowhere, that is where the work lies.
I know this is where my work lies. If you have found your way here, I imagine you too are willing to do the work and are willing to embrace the messy middle.
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face, then I’ll probably say it again, hard things are hard.
This came up probably in every session I had this week. When we go through hard things, we feel the discomfort, we reach for certainty and feel a desperate need to regain control. We want to “know what the end result looks like.” We want to hurry everything up and just get to the end, where we know for certain what the outcome is and that we survived. Imagine, you’re reading a book, the story line intensifies, and instead of continuing to read, allowing the story unfold, you impulsively flip to the last chapter so you can know how everything ends.
In this life, we don’t get to skip ahead. We don’t get to skip through the hard parts.
And if I’m being honest, it wouldn’t serve you to bypass the messy middle.
This is where the work is.
This is where we confront our patterns, our habits, and our beliefs. This is where we learn to sit with that discomfort instead of hiding, placating, or self abandoning. Yes, it is going to be hard; it might be hard for others in your circle, which could be another layer or trigger wanting to resolve their discomfort. Do you immediately feel the need to fix and save? Do you see other people’s comfort as your responsibility? Again, these initial responses to discomfort reveal important information about our patterns.
We all need to go through the hard to sharpen our skills, build our capacity, and teach ourselves that we can in fact, do hard things. We learn that discomfort isn’t the enemy we thought it was, and is actually one of our greatest teachers.
That’s it. That's the message.
Hard things are hard, and this is where the work lives. And the more you practice navigating the harshness that is discomfort, the better you get at navigating the harshness.
And isn’t that the whole point?
