Doing Hard things: Defining Easy-good and Hard-best

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:00:07

Well, hello and welcome to Blank Pages, the podcast. It's a podcast for people who appreciate the new beginnings of a clean slate, but strive for the courage, willingness, curiosity and creativity available only on the blank pages of new possibilities, disabilities. It's the potential to move beyond, to move forward, where people are willing to make new decisions from fresh perspectives and are ready to write in a much better way. So the world is waiting, and most importantly, nothing will listen better than a blank piece of paper. So I'm so excited about today's episode and actually for this series that I'm going to step into, and it's all around doing hard things. And so I'll be messing with the title here and there, trying to figure out the best way to present this information. But I've been dealing so much with and just in coaching and what I've been working on with people just in that whole area of just doing hard things and learning to do hard things better. And it's not easy.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:01:16

It's not easy to do hard things. I mean, there's a lot of things that get in the way of us doing hard things. And not only just once again, it's just not doing hard things, but it's just doing hard things better. And that's what I'm looking at doing. It's like, even with my kids, I talk to my kids, and one of the things that I talk to them about, some of this stuff, it's just new. I got one about to graduate college, one's married and have a grandson, and just talking with those older boys as men, and I'm learning that these things in life that even that I get to do with them, they're new things. Even being a grandfather, working with my son, there's nothing in my heart, my wife's heart, or anyone to interfere or try to work with them. We're doing something we've never done before.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:02:03

We're being grandparents with them, right. And the cool part is just doing hard things. Well, it's not hard to be a grandparent. What's hard is not to just be a grandparent and want to, I don't know, be in the middle of everything and get involved with everything and want to help, and you just can't help it, right? But you can help it. And these are things that we just have got to learn to become better at. So I just want to, first, before I jump into it, I want to say I'm doing something a little new. So some of you, you may be seeing this online, and so you see video with it. I've not done that before, so you'll still have the regular audio.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:02:39

But then I'm working on starting to incorporate because I'll be moving into some online stuff and I'm so excited about what's coming. So I am purposely gradually taking my time not to just shove a whole bunch of stuff out into the universe and say, oh, let's try this, try that, try that. I'm big into trying things. I am. But once again, this even goes along with what I'm talking about, doing hard things better and learning how to do new things, which are the things that are going to challenge you. So those of you who are listening, thank you so much. Hello. I'm waving if you can see me.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:03:12

I can't wait till eventually I'll have something where we do some live things. I'll have special guests that I have on, but I'll also invite some audience just to be a part of it, just to sit in, almost like it's a live show. But we'll just invite you to come sit in and you'll just be part of our studio guests or our audience. So if you're following me, I'd love for you to do so on Instagram and you can look me up at at Tim Pecoraro. I have some cool resources and things that I'm putting together from these series that I'm teaching or things that are coming out of these podcasts. I'm trying to give you some resource sheets and things that will be useful and helpful for you and your journey and your daily life and the things that you're doing. So I hope that you will take some time to check out those things. And the way you do it is you go to my bio link in Instagram, click on that link and you will find the resource sheets that are available.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:04:03

Actually, no, you might be able to see the resource sheets. I'm sorry, there'll be a bio link. In that bio link, you'll be able to find where you can sign up for my newsletter as well as find those links to those helpful resources. But first, I'd love it if you'd sign up, be a part of the newsletter that goes out once a month. It's filled with reviews of everything that we've done the month prior, but then all the things coming forward that I'll be talking about. And right now, I do believe I said I would do this, but I'm really getting into this topic of doing hard things and I got to do it. I've just got to go into it. So, yeah, join the newsletter.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:04:38

Let's stay connected. If you would like to dm me, please do in Instagram, send me a message. I will engage with you, talk with you. If there's any way I can be helpful, useful, point you in a direction. If there's something I may know or a direction I can point you in, I'm going to do that. So, yeah, I just want to be useful. I want to be helpful. So this is episode 16, and I'm like, right now, I don't know what the title will be, but it'll be up there.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:05:02

But it's around doing hard stuff, and it's important. And the importance of doing hard things. And what I want to do is I want to set a tone for you to just grab a hold of this overall topic. What we avoid can often be exactly what we need, right. So doing hard things, you have to understand, we're typically avoiding something. So maybe it's a conversation we don't want to have with someone. So instead, what we do, we do the easy thing and we tell everybody else, and then we might even say that we're trying to get some advice or some input from them. And those are our networks, those are our friendships, there are our safety networks, however you want to view it, but you have people that you should be able to know, like and trust that you can go to and share some things with.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:05:48

But that's the easy thing to do. But now the question is, is doing the hard thing, which is having the conversation with the person you need to have the conversation with and not doing it because you're armed with support from many other people. This is just getting down to where we can do life better, have hard conversations. We can do the hard work, the hard task, the things that are going to really move the needle or make the biggest difference, and not the simple, easy thing. I'll unpack this more as we move ahead. So let's just start by defining hard things. Okay? And that's what I want to do. So the growth zone, this is important, but the growth zone is outside of your comfort zone.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:06:26

So if you want to grow, you've got to move past comfort. And if you're in the growth zone, that means you are under the lights that the world, the universe that everybody sees. You're under the lights in the zone of difficulty, people are going to be able to look into that space and into that world, and they're going to be able to see everything that you have been doing in secret, in private, anything you've been doing to develop, grow, all that stuff. When it comes down to being in a situation, all of that is on display. It's like when you're given the opportunity to come clean about something, or when you're given the opportunity to maybe give credit to somebody who deserves credit. And maybe it's very hard for you because you feel like you've been overlooked so many times over. So the easy thing to do would be to take the credit and not say anything about it. The hard thing would be to celebrate the individual whose idea it actually was.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:07:28

Give them credit, swallow hard and don't bring up all the things you didn't get attention for. That's just not important. It's really not. I mean, it matters, but it's really not going to change your life if you get that credit. You can build more confidence in giving credit where credit is due. When it's someone else. You can build more courage and confidence in yourself by celebrating other people when they do things, rather than know that someone's giving you credit you don't deserve. It happens all the time.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:08:04

So the growth zone is outside your comfort zone. Comfort zone says stay comfortable at all costs. Comfort zone says do not disrupt. Comfort zone says do not rock the boat. Comfort zone says this is better when you can stay right here and don't cause anything else to happen. Don't move in any other direction, but stay right here. You may have a couple of little risky edges that you might step on, and it's like you're walking on a ledge, but the ledge is really 3ft in width, right. So there's really no danger of you coming off.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:08:40

That's comfort zone. That's easy. You're up on the ledge, you got there somehow, but you're still, like in a comfort zone with a three foot wide ledge. I want to get you into that growth zone, the zone where it's difficult. And I want to use this concept that I picked up and I've just been running with it, and I want to bring more of this into the world, into people. But it's that difference between what's easy good and what's hard best. And so in life, all the cycle that you'll go through in life is you learn something new. And maybe it was a challenge and then you learn it gets under your belt and now there should be an ease to it and a flow.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:09:21

It doesn't remove or say that there's the absence of future adversity or difficulty. What it means is you've learned enough for things to improve. So, like in pro sports, like in the NFL, you've got people that are 180 pounds all the way up to 330 plus pounds. The 330 plus pound people can move over 40 yards. Some of them could be six foot six and run a 5.440 yard dash. I mean, that's pretty fast for such a sizable human being. And so when people come out of college and they get into that next level sport, when they get into playing professionally, one of the things that starts to be quickly seen or evidenced is how fast the game is. It's very quick.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:10:09

And so when they get in, it's a lot of hard stuff. A lot of hard work. And so by doing the hard work, it actually slows down the game. Meaning, because you're doing the hard work of learning, the hard work of understanding the playbook, because you're doing the hard work of knowing how to do the drills and the movements, you're paying attention. You're studying your book, you're studying your film, the playbook. You're working with your positions coach, you're working with your other teammates. All of that stuff is the stuff that's done in secret, stuff that people don't see. But then you get on television as a pro athlete, and now the lights are on, you're on the field and a clock is running, and there's a game to be played.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:10:47

And so you will find out if you are a hard best person in training or you're an easy, good person because it'll show up on the field and there is a difference between the two. So let's talk about these hard things. I want to define it, and what I want to do is I want to give you some definitions on hard best and easy good that I hope are going to maybe encapsulate what the essence is of what I'm trying to talk about. So these are my definitions that I put together. And then I'm also going to supply some resource sheets in the future that are going to help you even figuring out hard best and easy good in your life. Okay. My goal is to do the hard thing. I want to get better at doing hard things.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:11:28

I want to get better at when I need to forgive someone, I want to get better when I need to ask for forgiving and loving people. I want to get better at choosing to making sure that you delay gratification where you can have that thing. Maybe this is a deal that could go if I could get this one business deal. And so there's this one you really want, but there's one in front of it that you just can get. So easy good would be to take the one that you can get instead of the one that you really want. So what if you could delay your gratification and get the one you've been getting? A bunch of them. So just let that go and wait. Pass that one up and work and continue to work toward the one that you ultimately want.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:12:08

That deal, that's the hard best. You've got to focus it and there's going to be things that you need to include. So listen, before I go too far and get into too many sidebars, let me just do these definitions and we're going to have several weeks to talk through this. So hard best, here's a definition hard best refers to. Are you ready? The intentional choice of engaging with challenges and difficulties that demand effort, resilience and innovation, even when easier paths exist. So it's about seeking these opportunities for your growth. It's about learning and leadership. And it's often going to require that I step out or you step out of our comfort zone so that we can face uncertainty.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:12:54

So literally. In other words, get off your three foot ledge and narrow it down to the three foot ledge. Sorry, three foot ledge. Down to the three inch ledge or down to the nub of a ledge. Like if I used to rock climb and one of the things you would do for foothold is when you're climbing or a handhold, it could be a little tiny little sliver of something. And if you can just get just enough, I'm trying to show on the camera here, just to get a finger, fingertip on there and hook that little bit can actually help you continue to scale the face of a wall. That's pretty big deal. I mean, we're built with all we need to climb.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:13:30

Isn't that crazy to do this hard stuff? So continue with this definition. It's about seeking out opportunities for growth, for learning and leadership, often requiring one step out of their comfort zone and face uncertainty. So this approach is going to prioritize you ready your long term growth and self improvement, and you're going to choose that over immediate comfort or convenience. I got to say that again, when you approach the hard best in this way, from your growth, your learning leadership, it's going to require that you step out right into this uncertainty. But it's going to prioritize long term growth and self improvement over your immediate comfort or convenience. Individuals who embrace the hard best are characterized by you ready, their willingness to pioneer new territories their focus on mastering self control. It's regardless of their external circumstances. Their commitment is not just to finding a best solution, but it's also making solutions that others can use in their world as well.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:14:35

The hard best is a mindset that it's going to see beyond the temporary setbacks. It's where you view every challenge as a stepping stone to personal, you ready? And communal success. That's pretty good. I like that definition. It's pretty big, and I'll share that with you guys in the show notes. But let's go to the easy good definition. Easy good. You ready? It embodies the path of least resistance, often chosen for its immediate comfort, convenience and the perceived reduction of risk.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:15:15

It represents a mindset of decision making process that leans towards the familiar, it leans towards the comfortable, it leans towards the minimally challenging. It's often motivated by a desire for quick wins, a quick win, avoidance of failure and a perseverance. Sorry, a preference, sorry. For external validation over self fulfillment. That's pretty big. So the preference is external validation over the self fulfillment that's easy good. Those that are inclined towards the easy good may prioritize control over their environment and outcomes. They opt for shortcuts.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:15:57

They rely on others to test the waters before they commit to stuff. And while this approach can offer short term satisfaction and safety, here's the downside of it. They fail. The development of resilience. It won't happen. Ultimately, it's going to hinder their potential, their long term potential to achieve greater or more meaningful success. So I want you to understand, you can get a short term satisfaction with easy good, but you're going to limit all your long term stuff. So that's what I want you to understand.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:16:39

If you want to do only short time life in which I believe in presence, but to be present is for me building for my long term. I don't want to be present, and it's only for the short term. So the benefit of being present with someone is the short term thing, the benefit of even me doing this podcast, right? It's easy for me, I can do this, I can put these together, but what I'm putting together is for the hard best. So the thing that I'm doing is not hard, I've done the hard best of that. What I'm doing now is the hard best is in what I'm trying to bring forward and present to you in a way that's going to help you to continue to move forward. So that is my continuous improvement in doing what I'm doing in this podcast stretching myself and pushing myself to new limits. So the reason I'm giving you those two definitions, it's to bring together the core principles, right, and behaviors that are associated with each mindset. I want you to understand the easy good and hard best mindsets.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:17:40

I want to highlight the contrast that it's going to contrast basically the approaches to personal development and decision making. Basically, that's what we're looking at. You're going to make decisions based on easy good or hard best. So again, I'm going to put these resources together, and I just cannot wait to give you this one that's going to show you how to take your life to the next level by doing hard best. Okay? So why is it so important? Why is it important for us to do hard things? People say, I want it to get easier. I just wish it would be easier. I wish it would be easier. Well, then you're not going to grow.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:18:14

You're just not going to grow. If things are easier, you have to be put to test. Without the struggle, things will not grow. You have to, if you want to build muscle, you have to put in resistance. You have to put something there that your body has to work against in order to build muscle. You have to have some sort of tension and or resistance in order to grow. So why it's essential? Well, when you do hard best, you're going to break some old patterns, which I know you have. I have old patterns.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:18:47

You got to break them. They got to be taken down. You've got to get to a new spot where you're saying, look, I need to develop some new patterns for some new directions for the new things that I'm doing. It's essential because you need a deliberate disruption to those patterns and behaviors. You need to interrupt the way you've been doing life and things as usual. It's the only way, it's essential for you to do hard best because it's the only way for you to truly grow. It's the only way for you to renew your mind as a believer, as a Christian, it's the renewal of the mind. That's the way I view it.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:19:20

So the only way you could truly grow to renew your mind or to change your point of view, or according to psychology, that in psychiatry, right, the mind and the work of the mind, you want to rewire your mind. There's the opportunity to rewire your mind with better thinking, for better decisions, for better actions and outcomes. And we get to claim these on the other side. As long as we kind of get into them, right? So there's so many things that I can go into, and I'll bring this up in the next episode. But one of the best books that I think you can read is obstacle is the way by Ryan Holiday. And it's basically about turning obstacles into opportunities. And so that is one of the core ideas of that book. So basically, obstacle is the way is about this.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:20:09

Through perception, action, and will, your will, we can transform obstacles into stepping stones towards our goals. So in other words, you've got to do the hard thing. So let me walk you through this paradox, right? I shouldn't say paradox. Paradox is the first thing that we'll have by what we do to not let ourselves grow. So let me just start with a statement to lay this out. Let me start with a statement. Okay, here is the statement that we're going to run through and that will kick us off for doing hard things better. The hard best, not the easy good.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:20:46

So what we avoid can often be exactly what we need. Let's just take that statement. What we avoid can often be exactly what we need. So here's the thing, though. There's a paradox that while our instincts often lead us to avoid discomfort and challenges, it's within those very experiences that significant growth and learning are available. And they're right there in front of us. That's where they lie. Significant growth and learning are right there in the midst of that discomfort or that challenge.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:21:22

That is the opportunity. So the first thing I want to point out off this statement, what we avoid can often be exactly what we need. Number one is we have an avoidance. There's this paradox of avoidance that we deal with in avoiding what we fear or dislike. It's going to give you that temporary relief I was talking about. You'll get a temporary hold on some stuff, but ultimately it's going to keep you from, I guess, from discovering your true potential. So the more you stay in that safe zone, the more you don't allow yourself to experience a significant growth and learning and go to where those things lie, which are in the midst of the thing that you're trying to avoid, the discomfort of the challenge, you're not going to see your true potential. So that's the first one.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:22:09

There's a paradox of avoidance. The second one that I want to bring about. What we avoid can often be exactly what we need. I want you to take this thought. It's in the nature of growth. That's why this is so important. This is why doing hard things is important, why because growth isn't found in comfort and ease, but it's through facing the challenges, stepping outside of your comfort zone. So you have to understand, it's like a muscle, right? I just talked about if you're going to lift weights, you get muscle through the tension, through the body pumping and the blood going into that muscle group, and it's just filling and it's just making that strength and that you're basically breaking something down to build it back up in a healthy way.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:22:51

Through deliberate motions, through exercises that concentrate and focus and isolate the area of a body that you want to develop, even in the ankle. Like injury, soft tissue, taking care of things that can be injured easily. You have to make sure you pay attention to that. And so you have to allow yourself to grow, you have to get into the challenge. And so using that same illustration, a muscle grows through the stress of the exercise. It's going to be uncomfortable, but it has ultimately a tremendous benefit. I used to do this thing with a rubber band, where I would take the rubber band and I would have that people stretch it over like a clipboard, the long way, big, thick rubber bands, and I'd have them write their name as small as they could on that outstretched rubber band. So they'd write their full name.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:23:41

So in my case it would be Tim Pecoraro. And then you'd take the rubber band off and they'd wear it on their wrist while I did a talk. But then at the very end, because I was talking to them about finding out who they really are and how they show up, I told them, I want you to take your finger and I want you to pull that rubber band that's there. And now do you notice what you see? And everybody would notice. They could see their name, but not only see their name, but they could see it clearly, because when they let it go and it's in that shrunk down state where the rubber band is not engaged, then there's no tension in the band. It just looks like scribbles and it's all tight and compact and you can't read, it's illegible. But when you stretch it, you can see it. And so once we're stretched, our true visibility shows up.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:24:19

If that's the best thing you take away today, allow yourself to be stretched. The third thing is just facing our fears. We have a hard time. It can be liberating and transformative experience when we allow ourselves to face the fear. I remember for me there was a fear of having to face. I grew up with some pretty poor authority figures in my life that were men. And I had a very hard time with that and not trusting their authority and how they led and the way that they would deal harshly. And it was very hard.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:24:48

So I had to face fears by the people that were my superiors and people that were over me and my authority and my leaders at work and places of work. In my early days, especially when I was like 19 and 20, when I was really, truly in a bad state and just wandering around and just wasting my life, I had to face my fears when a man approached me from Missouri and literally said, I see a lot of talent and potential in you, and I want to help you. And that was the day, one. Day one for me, of learning to face a fear and do something different and to avoid. And this helped me to get a better path forward and having men in my life to help me to do that. The fourth one is the hidden gift that's in your discomfort. I'm bringing the statement up here once again that what we avoid can often be exactly what we need. Why? Because there's a gift inside that discomfort.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:25:41

There's a hidden gift that can come from you engaging this difficult task or situation. Listen how often we are held up. It's almost like there's a barrier we just cannot get through to the other side of unlocking new skills or getting a deeper understanding or getting greater resilience because of the fact that we don't recognize how often we avoid and how we stay away from. Therefore, we don't see the hidden gift in the discomfort. The fifth one, and this is the one I'm going to wrap up with, is the role of your mindset. Now, this is huge. There are four key things within this mindset. There's a personal growth mindset.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:26:33

There's the one for the relationships that I want to focus on. There's the professional success and then ultimately the contribution to society. Those are four things I'm always thinking about. You get to be one person that steps into all those four things. Personal growth. You get to go into deepened relationships with other people. You can go into professional success as well as being a person who contributes in a healthy way to society. Now, I'm not going to get into all of that right now.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:26:59

I just want to focus on this mindset. Part of it. I want you to understand that you can change this approach. You are the one that has the ability that you can move from viewing your challenges as threats to seeing them as an opportunity for your growth. You can change your approach, you can change the approach that you would typically avoid. And what I want to do is just want to set you up. I want to set you up with this picture of the importance of why you should be the one to do the hard best. And it's because I want you to understand that these challenges are going to evolve you, that when you allow yourself to go through what I'm calling this hard best challenge, you're going to allow this to develop you, to improve you, to unlock more of your potential.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:27:56

So if this is in front of you and this is something that you feel like you're up to taking on that challenge, I want to help you get some practical ways to be able to do this. Okay? So until we talk next week or on the next podcast, what I want you to do is get yourself set to get on this. Embracing a climb. I want you to embrace a climb to where you're going to shift your thinking. You're going to shift the way you think for transformative growth. That's going to embrace doing the hard stuff and doing the hard stuff well, as opposed to doing the easy. I want you to delay, to gratification for the instant, for you to wait for what is coming. I want you to build for the long term.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:28:46

And that's what we're going to focus on. So I want you to understand that there is a problem that we have. All instinctual response that's in us is to retreat when faced with challenges. For the most part, it's the way we survive. But in a world where our challenges are less about survival and more about our growth, this instinct is going to hold us back. It's going to keep us from taking the necessary risks, from learning and from forming deeper relationships. So there is a solution and that's what we're going to get into. So as far as right now, for kicking this off, I want you to understand that we want to do the hard best, not the easy good.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:29:33

We want to know that this hard best means we're going to break old patterns. It's going to be a deliberate disruption to patterns and behaviors. It's the only way to truly grow and renew your mind. And I want you to know it's through this obstacle. The obstacle is the very way. Why? Because we're prone to avoid. The thing we're avoiding could be exactly what we need. So we have a paradox of avoidance.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:29:57

That's the first thing. The second thing is there's the nature for our growth that we can grow if we want to, but we have to get out of our comfort zone, we have to, number three, face our fears. So I want you to confront them. We're going to work on doing that. And then the fourth one is understanding that there are these hidden gifts that are within the discomfort. When we get an uncertainty, there's a gift there, we'll get into more of that and then the role of mindset in all of this. So I want you to spend some time thinking about what are the things that you can bring forward. I want you to think about identifying those challenges.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:30:32

I want you to think about those challenges, things that if you could say, I want to do hard best in my personal life, relationships, work, or just in the community, those four areas, I want you to be thinking about that. Before we talk next week. Just remember, you can do this. You can do hard things well. Like with my sons, when I talk to them about it, and even my son with our grandson, our oldest, and talking with him, just even talking about family stuff and doing things different, being able to tell him, I've never done this before. I've never been here. My family story is very different. And yeah, I've never been here, but I'm enjoying it and I'm doing something hard and I'm enjoying it and I want to do more hard things and I want to do them well.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:31:13

So think about it. Take some time, be thoughtful. Sit down. Imagine what is that big thing? What's the mountain? If you had to view it as a big thing that you have to overcome, what is it in your personal, your relationships, your professional and in the community, you can do this. I know you got it. And I'm looking forward to hearing some of your comments. So if you listen to this and there's something you want to share, go to Instagram at Tim Pecoraro. Send me a DM.

Tim Pecoraro [: 00:31:44

Share your thoughts with me. So I'm looking forward to getting into doing hard things better. Doing the hard things, doing the hard best and not the easy good. So until next time, I am looking forward to speaking with you. And yeah, keep your head up, keep working hard, and we'll talk soon.