✍️ Desk of Amy Suto: Choose Your Hard
If you don't choose your hard, it chooses you.
Happy Sunday! In today’s newsletter, you’ll learn about…
✍️ Why you need to choose your hard before it chooses you
☕️ How the easy path may make things harder in the long run
😎 Why inaction is also a choice
📖 3-Minute Story: Choose Your Hard
Back when I was an assistant in Hollywood, work was hard.
I was up at 5am before my job to write my own scripts, then clocked in for an 8am-8pm day, and then went to networking drinks after work. I would collapse and do it all over again, sometimes swapping out my 5am writing sessions for gym time.
That “hard” worked for me until I got where I wanted as a TV writer, and then I decided to pick a different kind of life.
👩💻 Early entrepreneurship was hard.
I had to make freelance writing and my other businesses work for the holistic, work-life-travel balance I wanted for myself as a digital nomad. Plus, I was learning a lot of hard lessons about how to make it all work.
Right now, it’s “hard” to learn all of the technical skills I’ve been learning for the startup I’m working on with my co-founder and partner Kyle.
But I’d pick all of these “hards” in a heartbeat over the “hard” of not following my dreams, seeing the world, and building my own businesses and products.
Here’s the truth:
✍️ You choose your hard in life -- otherwise it chooses you.
I often run into people who tell me --
"I'd love to do what you do, but it's too hard."
The thing is, you choose your hard.
It's hard to start a business, build your dream life, and pursue what brings you alive every day -- in whatever form that is.
🥦 Eating your vegetables is rarely fun in the moment, but it pays off in the long haul in the form of health and longevity.
Remember that inaction is also a choice:
❌ If you choose to AVOID going after your dreams, you also choose the hard of always wondering "what if."
❌ If you choose to take it easy now, you opt into the hard of falling short on your goals later.
So often we find ourselves at a crossroads in life --
-- where we don't even *realize* we are making a pivotal choice. Because we chose to do nothing when doing the good hard thing would change everything.
Be present enough in your life to recognize the signs of a choice to be made.
An action to be taken.
Pick the hard that makes it easy for your dreams to come true in the long run.
✨ 2 Quotes to Inspire You
"Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again." — Barbara Corcoran
"I didn't get there by wishing for it or hoping for it, but by working for it." — Estée Lauder
✍️ 1 Journal Prompt for Reflection
Do an audit of all of the choices you’re making in the day — or, the choices you’re avoiding. Which ones are “easy” — you just taking the easy way out — and which are a good “hard” — setting yourself up for future success by eating your vegetables now?
Feel free to share your reflections in the comments:
💻 New Blog Posts on AmySuto.com
🎙 New From the Desk of Amy Suto Podcast Episodes
#107 Three Mistakes to Avoid When Self-Publishing Your Book on Amazon KDP (5 min)
#106 Three Steps: How to Write a Book Outline for Your Memoir or Nonfiction Book (3 min)
#103 Four Lessons From Eat, Pray, Love: Best Travel Memoir Example (9 min)
I create these podcast episodes from my blog archives using the tool Wondercraft AI, a text-to-speech tool that speaks in YOUR voice. 🎙 Use my code SUTO50 or this link to get 50% off your Wondercraft AI subscription! (paid/affiliate link)
📸 Photo of the Week: Fall in NYC
Fall-ing back in love with NYC in November 🍁
Follow me on X/Twitter or Instagram for more!
⚡️ Upcoming Wednesday Edition: 10 Tips for Monetizing Your Substack Newsletter
This Wednesday, ✍️ From the Desk of Amy Suto paid subscribers will get an exclusive issue about…
✨ 10 tips for monetizing your Substack newsletter
🧪 Some of the lessons I’ve learned running this newsletter
📚 Surprising ways to land more subscribers
Sending creativity and good writing vibes your way,
-Amy
Mmm, this puts a finger on what I’ve been feeling lately. No path is easy, so you want the version of ‘hard‘ that has the upsides you really want — thank you xx
This one gets the SPOT ON award. Thank you so much for "choose your hard." I'm in the middle of my hard and this was just the inspo I needed. :) GRACIAS!