The Nice Little Lie We Keep Telling Ourselves
What I should have said to my sister six years ago.
It gets easier, right?
My sister had her son a bit later in life. By the time he arrived, my own kids were well into their teens. So when she was with us a few months in, running on no sleep, wrestling with a fussy baby, and navigating a separation from her husband, her world seemed upside down. After a particularly rough stretch, she sat with me and Michelle and said, almost pleading, “It gets easier, right?”
Michelle and I just looked at each other. I think we mumbled something about how tough it is when you’re not sleeping. Which is parent code for: we didn’t have the heart to tell you the truth.
The truth is, kids are unrelenting. At every age.
Ours are in their twenties now, and by every reasonable metric, they’re killing it. Professionally, academically, socially, cute-as-can-be-ally. And as tempting as it would be to take a victory lap, parenting still kicks our ass on the regular. Bigger kids, bigger problems. We’ve traded diapers and sleepless nights for relationship advice, career guidance, and... well, sleepless nights.
They say you can only be as happy as your saddest child. And by and large, we’re happy. We have every right to be. But this little journey we’re on? It never gets easy. At any age. It just changes shape.
So the real answer to my sister’s question isn’t “yes.” It’s that you learn to handle hard better. And that’s not just a parenting thing. That’s a life thing.
So this week, let’s talk about handling hard better, what it really means, why it matters, and how you can build the kind of resilience that doesn’t crumble when the stakes go up.
The Myth of Easier
We all have a version of my sister’s question. It just sounds different depending on where you are in life. Getting through this week. Closing on the house. The kids starting school. There’s always a finish line out there where everything supposedly calms down.
It’s a sweet little thought. It’s also a blatant lie.
I spent so long wanting to believe in the myth of the easier life. When my kids were babies, I was sure toddlerhood would be the relief. When they were toddlers, school age was going to be the break. Teens? They can drive. They can make a sandwich. Surely this is where it levels out. Nope. The hard didn’t leave. It just changed shape. Diapers became co-signing on apartments. Tantrums became tuition conversations.
I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but a while back the head coach of Duke women’s basketball gave a talk about handling adversity. Her name is Kara Lawson, and the video went viral for her blunt message and oh so relatable honesty. Life never gets easier, she says. You just become someone who handles hard stuff better. Stop waiting for the easy. It’s not coming.
Which is both deeply inspiring and deeply depressing.
But she’s right. And it connects to something I wrote about a while back about taking the path of most resistance. The hard stuff isn’t a detour. It is the road. You don’t get to skip it. You don’t get to outrun it. You just learn to walk it with better shoes.
What Changes When You Stop Waiting for Easy
So if easy isn’t coming, what does handling hard better actually look like in practice? It’s a fair question. And the answer is annoyingly unsexy.
It looks like steadiness. Not some zen master calm where nothing bothers you. Just the quiet confidence that comes from knowing you’ve done hard before and come out the other side.
Let me give you an example. We just found out one of our cats has feline diabetes. And I know, it’s a cat. We are operating on a sliding scale of life events here. But still, she needs a two-day overnight hospitalization and after that we’re going to have to give her twice-a-day shots for likely the rest of her life.
We already lead pretty busy lives. And between the cost, the energy, and the what-the-hell of it all, it’s hard. But we’ve been through worse. We’ve weathered tougher storms. This isn’t even the hardest pet calamity we’ve endured. So we’ll roll up our sleeves and figure it all out. Not because I’m some enlightened guru who has cracked the code on suffering. I mean, I still can’t figure out how to fold a fitted sheet. I just have more reps.
And reps matter more than people give them credit for. Your first crisis feels like the world is ending. Your tenth still hurts, but your feet are under you. You know that the 3am brain is a liar. You know that most of the scenarios it’s spinning up won’t happen. You know that sleep will do more for the problem than your phone will.
My sister didn’t have those reps yet. That’s why she was asking the question. She wasn’t weak. She was new at this. And there’s a big difference between the two.
Getting Your Reps
So how do you actually get reps at handling hard? Because you can’t just sit around waiting for life to punch you in the neck and hope you learn something from it. That’s not a strategy. That’s just getting punched in the neck.
The key is to start where the consequences are small.
It’s honestly why I love sports so much for young people. Not for the trophies or the college applications or whatever else we’ve decided youth athletics is supposed to be about. I love it because it’s this incredible lab for adversity. You lose a game. It hurts. And then there’s another game on Thursday. You miss the shot. Everybody saw. And the world keeps spinning. You ride the bench for a month, and you have to figure out whether you’re going to sulk or work.
None of that will ruin your life. But all of it builds something. You’re learning how to sit in discomfort without falling apart. How to bounce back from a bad day without making it your whole identity. How to keep showing up when showing up kind of sucks. Those are reps. Real ones.
And the principle works well past your playing days. You can do a version of this as an adult:
Ask for the raise knowing they might say no.
Volunteer to present to the room when your stomach says absolutely not.
Say no to the thing you don’t have time for instead of saying “maybe” and hoping it goes away.
Start a project knowing it could flop.
I wrote a while back about rejection challenges and the people who practice getting told no on purpose. Same idea. Put yourself in the path of manageable difficulty, and the unmanageable stuff gets a little less terrifying.
The key word there is manageable. You don’t train for a marathon by running one. You start with a mile that makes your lungs burn and your knees question your life choices. Then you do it again. And again. And one day you look up and realize the thing that used to wreck you barely registers.
That’s what reps do. Not make hard easy. Just make hard familiar.
In Conclusion
My sister’s son is six now. He’s loud and funny and exhausting and wonderful. And if I had to guess, I’d wager she’d say her life now is not easier than it was. It is just different hard.
I still think about that night she asked us the question. And I wish I’d had a better answer for her than a tired look and a mumble about sleep deprivation. So if I could go back, here’s what I’d say.
No. It doesn't get easier. Not really. Get used to disappointment. But you will get steadier. The hard will keep coming, and it’ll keep changing shape, and some days it’ll still knock the ever living crap out of you. But you’ll get back up faster. You’ll panic less. You’ll trust yourself more. And one day you’ll be sitting across from someone who’s right where you used to be, and they’ll ask you the same question. And you might know exactly what to say.
This week, try one small rep. Just one. Something that makes you a little uncomfortable but won’t break you. Ask, speak up, say no, start. See what it feels like to choose the hard on purpose.
Ever Forward,
— Derek (aka Chief Rabbit)
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