“All things are difficult before they are easy” -Thomas Fuller Are all things difficult before they are easy? If this is true, what are the strategies we can deploy to accomplish more? Are some things inherently easy? Is easy the goal? Would the world be a better place if everything was easy? What in your life is difficult today that you would want to be easy? How can you transform that which is difficult to easy?
Hunter Powers: Welcome to the one. I'm your host, Hunter Powers, broadcasting live from our nation's capital, DC proper, Washington DC. Today's one idea is all things are difficult before they are easy. This quote comes from Thomas Fuller, who I don't know a lot about. I know that he died in 1661, so just a few years ago. He lived in England where he was heavily involved with the Church of England. His most famous work was a book called The History of the Worthies of England, which seems to be a collection of historical facts of local history that was published after he died. That's what he's most known for. And in full transparency, I could not find the actual place that he said all things are difficult before they are easy, but at some point I heard this quote and I wrote it down, and it's something I've been thinking about. And so today we will examine it.
Hunter Powers: All things are difficult before they are easy. What does it mean? Do we agree with it? And how can we use it? It seems pretty straightforward, that most of the things, well no, not most of the things, all things, everything when you first encounter them they are difficult, they're challenging. The unknown is challenging. And everything you perceive, or that anyone perceives as being easy was at one time difficult. All things are difficult before they are easy.
Hunter Powers: This statement also has an odd way of being both positive and negative, somehow being both a statement of encouragement and discouragement. It's encouragement because it suggest a path to easy. There's something that you want to do that you find to be challenging, there's something new. Man, if only that was easy for me. If only I could get that done. And right now I can't figure it out. So, it's encouraging. There is easy, and it's going to be difficult now, but it suggests that it gets to easy. And then discouraging because it suggests that everything starts off as being difficult, and in general we can only tolerate so much difficult.
Hunter Powers: And I guess the quote doesn't necessarily suggest that all things become easy. Again, it says all things are difficult before they are easy. That's a leap of faith to suggest that all things are difficult and then become easy. It's just actually saying that the things that are easy were difficult at one time, not that all difficult things eventually become easy. It suggests that there is a process to things, a process to learning, a process to becoming competent in a new area, and that that process starts with difficult.
Hunter Powers: I recently had someone ask me what were some challenging situations that I navigated my way through in the past. They wanted a few stories. And in thinking about it, I acknowledged the challenge in answering that question was that most of these situations were no longer challenging, because I'd been through them, and that really the question more specifically was what are some situations that were once challenging? Or, what are some situations that I as the person asking the question might perceive as challenging? Because that question on the face of it, what are some situations that are challenging that you've had to deal with, that they've worked through, would actually be asking what are some challenges that you're actively working on that you've never solved, that you've never worked through?
Hunter Powers: Because if you've worked through them, most likely they're no longer challenging. Here's another example of that, pushed to a little bit of an extreme, what if I asked you what is some ice cream that you've eaten that is frozen? And given that you've eaten the ice cream, it's no longer frozen. The frozen part was actually the past state of it. And so that's an awkward question. And so what are some situations that you've dealt with that are challenging is the exact same question. The challenging was the past state of it. And why? Because all things are difficult before they are easy. So, I think that quote calls out that relationship between the two states of being difficult and being easy, and suggests the progression between the two. And importantly it does not say that all things that are difficult become easy, it merely states that anything that is easy was once difficult.
Hunter Powers: Now that we know what it says, do we agree with it? Well, are there situations where it doesn't hold up? Are there things that are inherently easy? How about breathing? Breathing seems pretty easy. But I don't know, perhaps the moment you are born, breathing is a struggle in those first moments trying to figure it out. I don't recall, it's been a long time. But okay, that's not necessary a violation of this law.
Hunter Powers: You could think of some sort of service that is pampering you. Let's say staying in the world's nicest hotel. That sounds pretty easy to me, I don't think there's anything difficult about that. Everything is super, super nice. But behind that act of staying in the world's nicest hotel had to be some significant exchange of value, whether you paid for it or someone else paid for it and you had to have a relationship with that person. Or there was some other exchange of goods. And that was probably difficult, so I don't think that's a violation.
Hunter Powers: We could look at the angle of things that seem to never be easy. Things that are inherently always difficult. But as we discussed in the first part, the quote does not say that everything is eventually easy. Although interestingly, I might go there, that anything with enough practice, enough discipline loses the allure of difficulty. That hard is more of a state of mind than we wish to acknowledge. And I guess I'll note that the word difficult suggests possibility. And I was thinking through the extreme scenario of a person that has no legs, and you could try to apply this and say, "Well, walking for them is very difficult because they have no legs." And we could vary the definition of walking to some form of getting around.
Hunter Powers: But let's just for this say that the definition of walking is having two legs and using them to move around. Moving around with two legs. And they do not have legs. And so are you really saying that walking around for them, while it's difficult now, eventually one day it'll be easy? No, by that walking around would be impossible. And the quote is not things are impossible before they are easy, the quote is all things are difficult before they are easy.
Hunter Powers: And so I guess now that I think about it a little bit more, there are some things that are impossible. And those some things must be part of all things. So, there's your edge case, because this quote does suggest that all things have a state of difficulty and they ignore impossibility. Now, creativity is a path between impossibility and difficulty. You take the person with no legs, we do know there are ways for people with no legs to get around, to accomplish the goal that is walking even if they aren't walking around on their own native two legs.
Hunter Powers: So, given that that is a far out there extreme and there still is a creative solution to get from impossible to difficult, I don't think that violates the quote. And then we could stick with that impossible angle and let's just take something other worldly like shrinking yourself down to the size of an ant, turning yourself into a frog. Well, that's a thing, and it seems like it's impossible. And again, the edge case here is that is there ever a transition from the state of being impossible to the state of being difficult? Because for this quote to work, there has to be. And again, with these far out there ones, again with these far out there ideas, you're going to have to apply a good deal of creativity to make that transition. But if you wanted to become a frog, if that's your life goal, and you're trying to find the transition from being an impossible task to a difficult task, you could ask yourself well, why is it I want to be a frog? What is it I want to accomplish as a frog? If I was a frog, what are the things I would do?
Hunter Powers: And perhaps there's a way to do those things. Perhaps there's a way to don a virtual reality headset and become a frog and hop around. I don't really actually know what frogs do all day. But again, through creativity there is an answer. And while I don't foresee a scientific breakthrough of actually making the DNA transformation happening any time soon, or any time really, with creativity we can find a solution. So I think yes, yes is the answer, we agree with this quote. It holds up, it holds up under scrutiny. And it's only in the outer, outer bands where you're turning yourself into a frog that maybe it has some weakness.
Hunter Powers: Maybe in the 1600's, Thomas did not take the time to consider this scenario. But still, with a little bit of creativity we could make it work. And now for our third and final question, how can we use it? If we know that all things are difficult before they are easy, how can this help propel us forward? There's the idea of if it was easy, everyone would do it. How do you define the value of what you're doing? How do you justify your actions and the works that you do? How do you separate yourself from others? How do you bring value to people? This allows you to identify that value more easily because everything that you're doing by definition was once difficult. And the reason that everyone else doesn't do this thing is because it is not easy for them, so that which is easy for you is by definition not easy for everyone.
Hunter Powers: You can take some self worth out of that. I think you can also this idea to help develop your strategy for getting something in the beginning. I feel like by default when we go to new things, we sort of hope that they're going to be easy. I hope this is easy, I hope I'm well prepared. I hope I can get through this. If you're preparing for something new, a new challenge, a new opportunity and you assume it's going to be easy, a walk in the park, or you assume it's going to be difficult, you probably prepare differently. And if you know, or at least highly suspect that on the other side of difficult is easy then the path that you take to get from difficult to easy might be a little different.
Hunter Powers: There's another quote from Gary Vaynerchuck or Gary V. who says, "Force your way through it, and incrementally get better over time by deploying patience." And I would say that's sort of Gary V's ethos. But I think that strategy is very interesting in the face of this notion that all things are difficult before they are easy. If you know it's going to be difficult in the beginning, and you know that it gets easier over time, then the most important characteristic of those early moments could be forcing your way through them, having that self discipline to just keep moving forward and being patient about it all because you know that it has to be gone through. Because once you break through that difficult state and it starts to become just a little bit easier, and then it's at that moment that you can start exploring the nuances of what it is.
Hunter Powers: There's the old life is a journey, not a destination. The destination is easy and the journey is hard. And I guess there's another interesting point in there that in general easy isn't a lot of fun. If you play a game on easy maybe for like a minute or two it's fun, but then at some point this is boring. Why? Because there's no challenge there. There's this joke about a gambler, they really love the slot machines and they die. And they open their eyes in the afterlife, they look around and they're inside of a casino. But they're not sure have they gone to heaven or hell. They see that slot machine in front of them and there's a big tub of quarters. And they take a quarter out and they insert it into the slot machine and they pull the handle and all the little symbols start spinning around, spinning around, spinning around, spinning around. And they slowly come to a stop and they're all exactly the same, and they've hit the jackpot. And all the coins come flying out, and they are celebrating. "I've done it, I've made it to heaven." Jackpot, jackpot, jackpot all coming out.
Hunter Powers: And they take the next coin and they put it in and they pull the handle, the exact same thing happens again. And they take the next coin and they pull the handle, the exact same thing happens again. Another jackpot. And it's at that point they realize this is not heaven, this is hell, a life completely devoid of any meaning. While we would all love to have a slot machine that we could go to from time to time and pull that handle and get the jackpot if we had one permanently installed in our house, it would very quickly lose its allure. And the reason that we do most things would lose any meaning, or at a minimum, finding that meaning would become far more challenging. And things that were once easy would then become difficult.
Hunter Powers: So, there's a little twist on the quote, a suggestion that something can transition back from a state of easy to difficult if it becomes too easy, because the motivation can disappear. And I've gone on a little bit of a tangent here, but circling around to the main question of how can we use this quote to do more, to achieve more, to get farther along, I believe it is by adapting our strategy. If this is something that we know, this is something that is probable, how can we prepare for it? What's the mindset that we can bring to it to get through this difficult stage and start breaking through to the easy stage, understanding the value of both going through the situation and having that experience? And that is your one idea for today. All things are difficult before they are easy, so said Thomas Fuller. I am Hunter Powers, broadcasting live from our nation's capital, as we say in the city, DC Proper. And until next time ...