How Do You Handle Hard Better?

Inspiring people with a “toughen up” message in our current culture is hard. In fact, many people won’t have it. I have learned that the hard way.

Unless, maybe, if it is delivered by Kara Lawson, Duke Women’s Basketball Coach. Here is a quote from a pre-season talk with her team in 2022.

“We all wait in life for things to get easier…. It will never get easier. What happens is you handle hard better. That’s what happens. Most people think that it’s going to get easier. Life is going to get easier. Basketball is going to get easier. School is going to get easier. It never gets easier. What happens is you become someone who handles hard stuff better…. And if you think life when you leave college is going to all of a sudden get easier because you graduated, and you got a Duke degree, it’s not going to get easier. It’s going to get harder. So make yourself a person that handles hard well.”

I think a case could be made that we live in a culture that values comfort, the absence of pain, more than any other culture in history (an argument for another post). If that has some truth to it, Lawson’s words are countercultural.

“Make yourself a person that handles hard well.” I am going to re-state that.

How can I better embrace the inevitable suffering that I will experience in my life? How can I become more joyful, impactful and stronger even as life gets harder.

Embrace suffering. I am good at sending signals to myself and others that my life is postcard great, not so good at sharing how I better embrace suffering. In fact, I spend a lot of time trying to run away from suffering.

I am not advocating that suffering is good, or that I should become a masochist in the name of personal growth. Maybe, it is more an acceptance that “hard” or “suffering” is just a part of the human condition. I don’t believe that we were meant to suffer, but the brokenness of our world has led to suffering as an inevitable part of life. We can choose to do hard things which bring suffering at times. And then, for many unexplained reasons, suffering can choose us.

To be clear, I have been fortunate thus far not to experience prolonged physical suffering in the way of chronic pain/disease. So, on that front, please take my words with appropriate skepticism. I have lots of wondering why there is this kind of suffering in the world?

However, if you embrace Kara Lawson’s premise that one key to life is 1) recognizing life never gets easier and 2) “handling hard better,” what does that mean? What does this mean for people becoming our best selves and leaders leading for bigger impact? A few thoughts.

First, I focus on embracing that “hard” helps me grow. Constraints force growth. Suffering is a constraint that sometimes we choose and sometimes we don’t. When I lift weights, my muscles only grow when I “break them”. When I feel the seer of one last curl, I know my biceps are growing. They don’t grow, unfortunately, sitting on my couch scrolling. When I experience a physically or emotionally demanding circumstance that I did not choose, I can feel stress and acute pain. I think growing my character and my leadership works much the same way.

Second, not only does “hard” grow me, but even better, it can grow me toward who I want to be if I ask the right questions. When I experience suffering, my hope is getting around to asking the question: What am I to learn from this? What specific part of my life journey am I to re-consider and think differently about? How can I turn this suffering into a way to bless others? Admittedly, the deeper the suffering, the longer it takes to get me to these questions. This process can be delayed months as I have no energy or cognitive capacity to reflect.

Third, after that first round of questions, eventually suffering pushes me from surface life to meaningful life. To ask bigger questions around who I am and how to live in this world. Who do I want to be? Answering the great question of my life.

The reality of sitting in a life of comfort everyday directs me towards pleasure not meaning - an easy, understandable path to take. Leading myself to lead others better requires me to walk the journey of meaning and embrace the challenge of handling hard better.

Reflection of the Week: Have you embraced a version of “handling hard better” in our life? If so, how?

Please share with a friend who might benefit from this reflection.

If you want to watch the full talk with her team, Kara Lawson: Handle Hard Better