If you have read Glennon Doyle’s wonderful memoir, Untamed, you’re probably familiar with her mantra “We can do hard things.,” which she used when describing her struggles with addiction and her journey to sobriety. She writes, “I say to myself every few minutes: This is hard. We can do hard things. And then I do them.”
Since the release of her book, the expression “We can do hard things‘” has become a cultural phenomenon, a worldwide rally cry. It’s emblazoned on everything from T-shirts and coffee mugs, to shopping bags and keychains. It’s everywhere. If you look closely at your life coach’s Zoom backdrop, there’s a very high probability that you’ll find a “We can do Hard things” framed print somewhere.
We can do hard things. So true. We can do hard things. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that we’ve been doing the hard things most of our lives.
I’m willing to bet that a lot of us have mastered the ‘hard things’ schtick. But for many of us, it’s the easy things that we struggle with.
Yes, we can do hard things. But what if we chose not to focus on the hard things all the time? What if we replaced “‘We can do hard things”’ with a new mantra:
We can do fun things.
In our productivity obsessed culture, we have been conditioned to believe that if we’re not focused on the ‘hard things’: (goal achievement, self-improvement, personal development, getting ahead), then we are ‘wasting our time.’. Fun and play are seen as trivial or unimportant – Something that we will fit in if we have the time (which we rarely do.)
As a result, we feel guilty if we are doing something just for the fun of it. It feels self-indulgent. We convince ourselves that we are selfish if we put our need for fun before the ‘important/hard’ things. As a result, time for fun or rest or self-care is the first thing to go when life gets busy. (And isn’t life always busy?)
Many of us have abandoned our passions and forgotten how to play because at some point in our lives we convinced ourselves that we should be productive and busy ALL. THE. TIME. Fun and play are seen as a waste of time, a distraction. We feel guilty if we’re not achieving and accomplishing. Instead of taking the time to read a book, paint a picture, or walk on the beach, we tell ourselves that we really should be doing something more productive.
We’re so conditioned to work hard and ‘do hard things’ that play and relaxation are foreign concepts. We are addicted to being busy. Relentlessly pursuing success. Grinding and hustling. We constantly feel guilty about what we’re not doing.
It has become such a force in our lives that this relentless pursuit of success and productivity is no longer just limited to our working lives. Netflix shows like The Home Edit and Tidying Up with Marie Kondo imply that our… ahem… “Free time” should be filled with activities like color-coding the books on our bookshelves, folding our T-shirts into perfect little squares, and storing the things in our pantries in beautiful baskets and separately labeled (and of course color-coded) containers.. #housegoals
Free time?! What’s that?!
As a result, we may have been so focused on productivity and achievement for so long that we don’t really know what our passions are anymore. Early in our careers, we told ourselves that we’d have more fun in retirement, but over time we may begin to realize that we don’t know how to have fun anymore.
We dismiss fun and play as kid’s stuff, but adult play is just as important to us as it is to our children. In the book Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul, Stuart Brown, M.D. states that “remembering what play is all about and making it a part of our daily lives are probably the most important factors in being a fulfilled human being.”
Wow. Let that sink in. Remembering what play is all about and making it a part of our daily lives is one of the most important factors in being a fulfilled human being?!
Hopefully, Dr. Brown’s research can help you put aside that nagging voice in your head that tells you that you should be busy doing something more productive. You want to be fulfilled, don’t you?
“Daily play is one of the most important factors in being a fulfilled human being.”
Post that on sticky notes throughout your home as your constant reminder so that when you’re tempted to spend your free time decanting your laundry soap (?!) or properly folding your socks and underwear, maybe you choose to do something just for fun instead.
So how do you reclaim play in your life?
- Give yourself permission. This isn’t frivolous or self-indulgent. Refer to the sticky notes above.
- Create a list of things that you love to do, without caring whether you’re good at them or not. That’s your form of play. Do this now. Write your list on a piece of paper, or open up a note on your phone or computer, and capture at least 10 things that you could do, just for the fun of it. This is your daily PLAYlist.
- Each day, pick one thing from your PLAYlist and do it. Schedule it in your calendar and treat it like an important meeting. Think of this as a playdate with your younger self.
So, yes, Glennon, (and every life coach on the planet) we can do hard things.
But we can also do fun things.
And there’s no better time than now.
Let me know in the comments what’s on your PLAYlist.