The road is never easier, you just get better.

Daily smart work leads to the goals you want in life. The process is the daily discipline, the daily fight and effort invested, that leads to the final outcome you want. There is a common wrong assumption that once you come to the final event, you can stop following the process. That once you achieve your goals, you can just relax and enjoy life ever after.

Newsflash: that is not exactly true

After you achieve your goal in life, you have to either continue following the process or initiate a new one. But even more often, you initiate a new process. If everything starts with a goal in your mind and then you follow a process to get you to your goal, a new process of managing what you acquired starts immediately after you meet your goal.

The moment you stop improving, the moment you stop growing, you start declining in some way. That is why they say that it never gets easier, you just get better. Now, the hard road becomes easy and the easy road becomes hard with time. But that is only true for the challenges with the same level of difficulty. How hard the new road is greatly depends on your ambitions. If you know how to set limits in life, if you are satisfied with good enough, you can undertake the perseverance road that is, the road of carefully managing what you have.

Everything is hard, before it’s easy. It’s still hard work, it still takes constant improvement and beginnings are always the hardest. But if you want to really become the best version of yourself, the hard roads never end. You cannot achieve a completely new level of success with the same mindset, actions and effort that you had before.

Absolutely follow the path of constant improvement. Absolutely undertake the hard road that becomes easy with time and after that, find a new hard road. That’s how you will become the best version of yourself. It’s about enjoying life and being proud of yourself, not proving yourself to others at all costs. Always celebrate the small wins on the hard road. Be proud of yourself, be proud of your progress.

If you have hard time enjoying the road, have a list of your past accomplishments, a gratitude list, introduce personal enjoyment rituals into your life that you don’t miss no matter what, and constantly remind yourself to work hard, stop and play and appreciate the journey. It never gets easier but you do not really want things to get easier. Because when things are not that easy, you can fight, you can improve, you can celebrate early wins and achieve new heights.