“I’m just so tired of the hard work! I just keep getting stuck on how much work it is to remember to let it all go. All these old tapes in my mind! I don’t want them anymore!”

It was like an echo from my past. My client’s words expressed exactly how I used to feel.

I had taken on on a family belief that hard work would get you everywhere. Except that it doesn’t if your heart isn’t authentically into what you’re pursuing. I found out the hard way after 10 years in a soul-sucking, left brained career.

And my client was in the same boat now, struggling to pursue her passion as an artist. The weight of hard work that she had applied to everything in her life was causing her to expect letting go of her old stories and making art for herself to be just as hard.

“It’s hard” is probably one of the top 5 BS beliefs out there.

It’s hard to make money
It’s hard to keep a relationship strong
It’s hard to have teenagers
It’s hard to get a good job
It’s hard to live the dream
It’s hard to break through
It’s hard to get a break
It’s hard to know what I want
It’s hard to believe when nothing ever seems to work

And don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with hard work itself. It’s that most of us have had bad experiences with the results of our hard work that we now feel jaded by it. We have come to expect that we have to work hard because everything is hard.

And in spite of so much hard work we usually haven’t achieved the results that we thought we’d receive:
Fulfilment
Money
Passion
Meaningful friendship and work
Feeling good and content being ourselves
Believing we do enough
Loving or even liking ourselves

Even if you have some of these things you want, some are missing and so you think you’re missing something. Or doing it wrong.

The problem is that so many of our past results have proven to us that hard work doesn’t work! It has become this self fulfilling prophecy.

Why then would we want to do more hard work to help ourselves break free of the old stories that keep us feeling stuck, unfulfilled and emotionally overwhelmed?

Why do we think it has to be hard?

Because we’ve been told that only hard work pays off and that anything worth doing is worth the effort.
Because our parents and caregivers meant well but they didn’t really know how to love and support us how we needed it.
Because we wanted to please others and so we shut down our own inner voices and did what we should do.
Because our society values hard work above many other important virtues.

The truth is, though, it’s not the hard work that’s the problem. It’s expectations from ourselves and others that skew our whole perspective.

Working hard at something that fills you up doesn’t even feel like work! You could do it all day long, right? Even if some parts of it aren’t your favourite. 

Take my client, for example. Her chosen art medium is quiltmaking. This means she must cut fabric, arrange it, sew it back together, put in the middle layers, make the backing, and stitch the whole thing into one blanket. This brings her such joy even though to non-quilters it would seem like hard work.

Why is it not hard work to her? Because she’s aligned with it, it fulfills her. Let’s say she doesn’t like cutting fabric but it’s a necessary step in her process. She does it because she knows it leads to a beautiful quilt. She has the right fabric scissors and so she cuts. If she had old, dull scissors, on the other hand, she would struggle and then the whole thing would feel hard.

With the right tool she can get it done fast and move on to the parts she loves.

The right tool and the right mindset will get you everywhere. Knowing how to use the tools at the appropriate time is working smart. And managing your own expectations of what hard work actually means to you is important, too.

Sometimes the part we don’t like is our job. Sometimes it’s a relationship. Sometimes it’s our past.

There will usually be a part we don’t like. But changing the way we approach it is the first step to creating change. 

Shift one thing at a time and see what opens up from there. It’s easiest to start shifting ourselves and our view of our world. 

Let’s challenge the hard work belief first of all. Especially that breaking yourself free of old beliefs and patterns is hard work and has to take a long time.

Imagine it’s like cutting fabric to make a quilt. In order to remember our power and find true meaning in our life one of the most important parts is breaking free of our past.

No one really likes to do that because that’s usually where our pain lives.

But, ultimately, it’s a matter of what you expect from the whole experience.

You can choose to work with the right tools and get it done. The tools will depend on what you’re dealing with and what you want instead. I can tell you that working through your unresolved emotions is one tool you can’t go wrong with. I share a tool for this at the end of this blog.

So, forget everything you’ve been told about hard work.
Tell yourself the truth – admit to yourself how you really feel and what you really want.
Don’t pretend to accept things when you truly can’t.
Use the right tools to get you to the results you want.

The key is to commit and do the smart work as often as you remember to do it.

You’re human and crappy days will happen. Know what you need to do on those days to get yourself back on track.

Think of this break through journey as you unlearning, releasing and rewiring your whole being – that’s no small feat; so be kind to yourself.

It’s like being a baby and growing into a whole person but without the benefit of being a baby: being fed, taken care of, getting to sleep as much as you want, getting everything done for you.

BUT you get to do this as an adult, with responsibilities and work and a family.

Give yourself a break!

Stop mentally and emotionally flogging yourself for whatever you think you’re screwing up!
For whatever mistakes you think you’re making and for wherever you think you’re stuck.

You don’t have to constantly feel bad when you’re working through your old stories or worry about not doing it right…the real yard stick is: are you feeling consistently better today than before? Great! Success!! Celebrate!

Beliefs are only thoughts you think over and over again until they become habits. The good news is, habits can be changed. And emotions can be released. 

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