Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty

As it should be, I guess, by definition. But the difficult part isn’t in doing difficult things, it’s in doing things simply for their difficulty. I am a sucker for challenges, but I have a built in reason-making robot in my brain that is highly motivated to do things that are enjoyable, or as Lele says, create LOLZ, WTFs, and STFUs. None of these are the same as doing them for their difficulty. Things I’ve done in the last week or so that meet this criteria include:

• Asking Josh to introduce me to John Bigley about starting a bar
• Hugging Alain de Botton
• Going to a social event alone when I didn’t really know anyone
• Continuing to “train” for a half-marathon
• Bleached my hair twice
• Signing a lease on a space for our bar
• Asking strangers to do the pat head/rub tummy movement while I took their picture

The thing I’m thinking about is bootstrapping yourself to be a person who constantly changes for the better. And encourages others to change for the better too. The main obstacle to doing that is lack of knowledge about how difficult it is to change yourself. By doing small changes all the time, you can get a better feel for what’s possible, how much effort things take, how effort is related to reward, how to build momentum and what to do with it, etc. This is a great goal.

This goal’s primary purpose is to get to know your habits and your fears. By doing things that are difficult, simply because they are difficult, you learn WHAT is difficult and WHY it’s difficult. Something difficult for you one day may be easy another. Today, I called a realtor about a bar that’s closing down. Tomorrow I’ll be getting more details, and possibly a tour. I sort of feel like a fraud, but this is helping. A new take on my mantra of accepting all offers is to explore all leads.