When we’re in the middle of a crisis and faced with tough decisions, we sometimes believe that there is only one direction we can head. Most times, there are two paths. We are presented with one of two options. The heavier path or the lighter path.

When you go through a crisis, ask yourself…Is there an easier path?

I was in a recent crisis moment as we were purchasing our first home together. Issues, problems, and challenges seemed to pop up around every corner. The sellers were being downright confrontational. Our agent seemed was unqualified. Even the family and friends that we reached out to for advice…people that have experience…offered unhelpful, highly vitriolic advice.

Typically, my response is to pin my ears back and stubbornly move forward through adversity.

My self talk is that I’ll hard work my way out of this.

Slowly, I’m learning that I’ve been doing it the hard way. We’ve heard the adage that you shouldn’t work harder, you should work smarter. That doesn’t work for me as my brain takes this as a cue to kick into high gear.

Don’t work harder. Find a different way and go around.

There are always two paths. The darker heavier path, or the lighter easier path. You can always choose to make something already hard worse by your response, or you can choose to make it easier by a different response.

Effortless

For more on this, learn more about being effortless from Greg McKeown.

Greg McKeown is famous for simplifying his life and calling on others to do the same in his book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. His newest book is called Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most. If his first book, Essentialism, was about prioritization, Greg McKeown’s second book, Effortless, is about simplification.

Here’s some simple steps:

• Training your mind to ask “How can I make this effortless?” can bring favorable results
• It is sometimes best to “Yield to Win”— and it’s not always about going the harder way
• Defining “What does done look like?” may already simplify the next step

If you focus on what you have, you gain what you lack. And if you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have.

Greg McKeown

Photo by Jens Lelie on Unsplash