Are You Addicted to Making Things Hard?

(A letter to my private clients circa 2019)

This was the thought I had...to myself of course, while I was recently working with a close friend. I decided to offer support on a project only to find that it sucked me in to an extremely ridiculous scenario of making the work really hard.

Needless to say, I chose to honor myself and not participate in days of making myself crazy over something I didn’t initiate to begin with. Now, don’t get me wrong....I’ve created MANY challenging and difficult scenarios in my day thinking that the level of challenge or difficulty somehow validated my ultimate result, level of success, or creation.

We live in a world where challenge is not only praised, it is sought after. We see things like....Work hard, play hard. Nobody said it would be easy. You can’t get where you want to be without HARD work and dedication. Don’t wait for life to easier, get tougher. I mean, really. This is the message we get from everyone around us day in and day out.

It also hit me that we are all a bunch of addicts! Yes! We are addicted to stress and complications. We’ve lived so long in it, when we let ourselves step outside of it for even just a minute we quickly find a way to create a scenario that throws us into an emotional state we recognize, like ....fear, worry, anxiety, or depression. The sad thing is we don’t even know we have an addiction and so it can’t be addressed let alone healed.

At the end of the week, I saw a FB friend of mine share several different posts about all of their challenges in relationships. They were BLATANTLY complaining. It’s likely the posts are an attempt at being noble because they are showing “gratitude” for the challenge. This is so sneaky-the covert way we complain with gratitude. How do I know it was a complaint? Because there were 8 or 9 different posts about the situation and at the end of it was always, I’m so glad I have this growth experience right now. I’m calling Bulls***. Even consistently talking about our challenge or difficulty is another way we live in the feelings we are addicted to. Slapping a little statement of gratitude at the end doesn’t allow us to get real about why we seem to keep making life hard for ourselves and others. If we are proud of our challenge, Life responds with, “wonderful! Let me send some more!”

It was then I realized....many people ARE ADDICTED TO MAKING IT HARD. It’s as if it means more for life to be hard and grueling. They tend to wear their challenges (and their ability to overcome them) like a badge of honor. This is no way to live in my opinion. What if instead of preparing for a fight or challenge, we prepare for EASE and blessings???

Now, if you’ve worked with me, you know all of that keeps us in a victim mentality. Period. We have no power there. We simply cannot create anything new.

So here’s my question and encouragement if you will....where in your life are you addicted to making things hard? Where are you regularly meeting challenge? Maybe you’re constantly going back to a relationship that creates difficulty, or a job, or a financial condition, or a health choice, or maybe you consider yourself chronically “unlucky”. Sometimes, it’s not nearly as obvious and we have to take a deeper look in order to get an answer.

If you’re willing to ask yourself this question and answer it honestly, you can begin to heal any need in you to make life hard or challenging and begin the process of recovery from the emotional addiction to your stress, worry, fear and anxiety.

My personal growth strategy in a nutshell?

*Keep it real
*Call a thing a thing
*Forgive
*Love and Accept yourself completely

Believe me...it works!


“The greatest gift you can give to the world is your life working.”

*Keep an eye out for the follow up to this post. I’ll be sharing the Obstacles of Ease-identifying and dissolving them.