I have always been a fan of doing things the hard way, I think if we are honest with ourselves every person tends to be this way. We always want things that appear to be harder because if we do those things and we manage to get over the hurdle of actually dragging ourselves out of bed and doing the thing we feel pretty good about ourselves and everyone wants that feeling.

Recently however I have found myself wanting to remove those hurdles and seeing if I could live my life with less mental push back. I have wanted to do this for a long time mainly because I realised that every time I engage in something that doesn’t come naturally to me I struggle way more than I need to and that at the end of this struggle I am not necessarily better off.

Of course there have been instances when I struggled and I saw some positive “rewards”, the thing I think about to in this regard was studying. I am one of those people who struggled during my academic career.

My degree took a lot from me and I wish I could look back and say the piece of paper I received was the reward but I am not sure that it was the biggest reward from that whole process. I think the biggest reward was that my degree taught me that not everything needs to be a struggle, and that quite frankly not everything should be a struggle.

I think we are taught that in life, in work and in love everything needs to be hard and I am slowly coming to the realisation and acceptance that maybe this lesson is false and has always been false. I think of every time that I have done something that came easy to me and how that didn’t mean that I enjoyed it any less or was proud of myself less. It was just as joyful. A good example of this would be the bouquet making workshop that I participated in a few weeks ago that I absolutely loved and has been the highlight of my year so far and that was easy.

It was easy for me to pay the fee, it was easy for me to attend and it was easy for me to play with the flowers once I stopped overthinking it. It was an easy breezy day and it was worth every minute.

I think back to that morning and I recall that I woke with my stomach in knots because I was anxious and I had to be convinced by my wonderful partner that it was actually going to be a good day and I had to just approach it with ease.

Now to be clear, I don’t think there is anything wrong with fighting mental battles, hence my blog yesterday about running, but I do believe that we have become so accustomed to everything being accompanied by struggle and hardship that when life gives us a moment of gentleness and lenience we tend to still cut whatever is in front of us, open it up in search of where the tough bits are. I am being awakened to the fact that maybe that isn’t always the case, sometimes a flower bouquet really is that; something beautiful, something tender and something that really is meant to just make you smile without first having to go through the inconvenience of frowning. My goal is to lean into these moments and for once not question why I am being embraced with tender hands.

Here’s to 2020 and following ease through following the path of least resistance as often as possible.

Thanks for stopping by – may you remember to treat everyone with more kindness than you think is necessary.