Lisa dives deep into the confusion around “let it be easy” versus doing hard things. If you’ve been avoiding uncomfortable actions or pushing through everything with force, this episode reveals the difference between allowing and forcing, and why both approaches can keep you stuck.
The “Let It Be Easy” vs “Do Hard Things” Confusion
Lisa addresses the apparent contradiction in her teaching. You’ve heard her say “let it be easy,” but you also have to do hard things. Here’s the truth: you can’t avoid discomfort if you want change, but you can shift your energy around how you approach that discomfort.
The Forcing vs Allowing Distinction
Many of Lisa’s clients are excellent at doing hard things. They’re masters at pushing through, putting their heads down, and forcing things to happen. But there’s a crucial difference between forcing and pushing versus allowing. The energy behind the action matters as much as the action itself.
Lisa’s Gym Story: When Hard Things Feel Torturous
Lisa woke up with sore legs, knowing she had to train glutes that day. Heavy weights, high volume, very mental. She didn’t feel like it. But she’s committed to her outcome, and she knows that if she starts negotiating with herself based on how she feels, she’s already losing.
Instead of wasting energy negotiating or switching to upper body, she went straight to the gym. While warming up, she shifted her energy from “Oh my God, this is going to be so hard and take so long” to reminding herself that she’s strong, capable, and her body can do this. She tuned into her body’s yes or no signals, which is different than just not feeling like it.
The key insight: she went in knowing it would be hard and asked “How can I allow this to be easier?”
The Truth About Transformation
Whether you’re trying to transform your body, lose weight, or grow a business, it’s going to be hard. Lisa can’t tell you how many face-down moments she’s had in business, how many hard decisions she’s made, how much adversity she’s faced. Being an entrepreneur isn’t for everyone and it’s definitely not a walk in the park.
When you’re doing hard things, it’s confronting. You have to look at your limiting beliefs, the stories you’re telling yourself, your current identity and ways of being. You have to stare all of that down, and it’s really uncomfortable.
The Real Question: Hard or Just Uncomfortable?
Most people aren’t willing to do uncomfortable things. So Lisa asks: is it that it’s hard, or is it that it’s uncomfortable and we don’t want to do uncomfortable things?
When the Hard Thing Is Slowing Down
For many high-achievers, the hardest, most uncomfortable thing isn’t pushing through more activities. It’s learning to slow down, say no, make rest a priority, have more fun, take things off their plate, be in the discomfort of not taking care of everybody else, and actually making themselves a priority.
Lisa shares her personal story: during her adrenal fatigue, the hardest thing was slowing down. When she thought she’d slowed down, she had to slow down more. She had to examine how she was showing up in the gym because some of the “healthiest” people she knows aren’t actually healthy. They’re so good at doing the doing that they’re avoiding the hard things they actually need to do, which is slowing down and resting more.
Breaking Down the Rest Resistance
When Lisa was learning to rest, she had to dismantle all her stories and beliefs: rest was lazy, rest was unproductive, rest was for “those people.” She had things to do. It was tied to her identity as an overachiever who wore “busy” as a badge of honor. She could do all the things and take care of everybody else while doing them. No wonder she burned out.
To heal, she had to learn that slowing down was the hard thing for an over-doer. Most people would say slowing down isn’t hard, but when you’re wired to constantly achieve, slowing down is the most uncomfortable thing you can do.
The Energy Shift That Changes Everything
Lisa had to learn how to make rest feel easier. Resting felt torturous, so she shifted her energy by reminding herself what rest would bring: healing, strength, the ability to do more ultimately. Rest wasn’t going to take away from anything. She had to learn to honor and value rest, and that’s how she allowed the hard thing to be easier.
The Universal Truth
All of us have an opportunity to examine what we’re doing in our lives. Are you avoiding doing hard things, or are you doing hard things but pushing through them with force? You can’t avoid discomfort if you want change, but you can shift your energy behind it.
The Magic Formula
Get comfortable being uncomfortable. The more you can get comfortable with being uncomfortable, that’s when the magic happens. In that discomfort, you can adjust your energy so that even when it’s uncomfortable, you still find a way to win and honor your energy.
What This Means for You
Look at where in your life you’re avoiding the hard thing. For some people, the hard thing is putting one foot in front of the other. For others, it’s learning to slow down and do less. Make no mistake: you’re going to have to do hard things and they’re going to be uncomfortable. But 99.9% of the time, you’re not going to die.
The question becomes: what feels hard that you’ve been avoiding? And what things are you doing that you’re telling yourself are hard that, if you shifted your energy around them, you could allow to be easier?
Ready to get comfortable being uncomfortable and create the results you want in your life and business? Connect with Lisa on Instagram to share your takeaways and get support on your journey.
Thank you for being part of this community. If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear this message.
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:27:13
Welcome to the Full Frontal Living Podcast. I'm Lisa Carpenter, a master life coach to driven, ambitious humans who want more out of life without having to sacrifice themselves to achieve it. I'll share how it's possible to slow down, take better care of yourself, find more peace and ease, create sustainable energy, stop procrastination and overwhelm and fall in love with your life, your business, and your body.
00:00:27:15 - 00:00:45:25
This podcast is for you. If you're ready to learn what it takes to thrive as a high performer, do less but achieve more. Make you and your well-being a top priority and create your extraordinary life. I'm so glad you're here.
00:00:45:25 - 00:00:55:22
for tuning into another episode of the Full Frontal Living Podcast. I'm your host us Lisa Carpenter, and I am so excited to be chatting about this today.
00:00:55:22 - 00:01:17:12
This is something that I'm super passionate about. I think it gets confused along the way, but we're going to be talking about kind of doing hard things because I know you've probably heard me say, you know, let it be easy. And at the same time you still have to do hard things. So we are going to dive into that today.
00:01:17:13 - 00:02:02:02
But first, I wanted to share with you that the podcast reached a really big milestone. I am just so over the moon thrilled, and it was one of those things that happened when I wasn't looking, which is generally what happens when you stop obsessing about something happening. It usually just happens. The podcast hit over 100,000 downloads and I want to personally thank you because if you're hearing me talking right now, I'm plugged into your ears and you are one of the listeners that helped to make that happen by you tuning in week after week, sharing with your friends and just showing up here.
00:02:02:04 - 00:02:25:22
You guys have helped me achieve a massive goal because remember, if you you know, if you've been hanging out with me for a while, I started this podcast after, you know, procrastinating on it a long time. And then when I started, it was just my commitment was I was just going to put out an episode every week. I was going to talk about whatever I wanted to talk about, and I was just going to figure things out.
00:02:25:26 - 00:02:49:03
I did it all myself. I used an app called Anchor and I just put one foot in front of the other and every week I put out an episode and I remember thinking like, Who's going to want to listen to this? You know, do I have even anything valuable to say and to now see what this podcast has grown into and what it will continue to grow into and evolve?
00:02:49:04 - 00:03:07:10
And now I've got a team behind me helping to produce that. It just it blows my mind. So if you are tuning in and maybe you're one of the the men or women who listen to me who are running your own business, please remember and this goes for anything in life. Truly, you don't even have to be running your own business.
00:03:07:12 - 00:03:45:01
There's so much power in just starting. Just start. Stop trying to get it right. Stop trying to get everything perfect. Stop trying to have the exact right message. And who am I talking to? And just go do the thing. Because the more you go do the thing, the more you will figure it out, you know? And even if I were to relate this back to, you know, my workouts in the gym, you know how my technique has progressed over the past couple of years as I've really focused on not just, you know, how heavy of a weight can I pick up, but how tight can I make my form, How can I improve as an
00:03:45:01 - 00:04:07:16
athlete? And, you know, now when I send my videos off to my coach, I'm so proud of myself when I just get a message back from her saying, it looks great. Like that is the biggest praise I can get because it means that the focus and dedication I'm putting into mastering my craft is really paying off. And the same is true with this podcast.
00:04:07:16 - 00:04:25:22
You know, if you go back and listen to some of the first episodes, you know, I might sound a little shaky or nervous, and the audio in some of them is really not great. And, you know, now I just show up, I talk, I have a lot more confidence even when I'm lying on. I don't know where this is going to go.
00:04:25:24 - 00:04:50:04
I just trust that whoever needs to hear the message is going to hear it. And I don't need to put it through a bunch of filters to try and get it right for you. So thank you. Thank you for being part of this. Thank you for being part of making, you know, my goals come to fruition and for allowing me to come into your ears and impact you in some way.
00:04:50:05 - 00:05:09:12
Nothing makes my heart feel bigger than you know. When I get a message from somebody saying, you know, you are with me on my walk and they just burst into tears because you, you know, you said something that I needed to hear that really shifted things for me. That is so powerful. So I'm just I'm just so pleased.
00:05:09:18 - 00:05:23:01
There's people all around the world tuning in and it's just amazing. So thank you so much for being here. So on that note, it kind of ties into what I want to talk about today, which is doing hard things.
00:05:23:01 - 00:05:24:16
So again,
often we don't achieve the things we want to do or we want to achieve in our lives because we're not willing to do the hard thing. Now, many of my clients are really good at doing hard things.
00:05:37:23 - 00:06:11:25
They're really good at pushing through and just, you know, putting their head down and getting it done, forcing things to unfold, so to speak. But this is really what I want to talk about because there's a difference between forcing and pushing versus allowing. So today I woke up my legs were sore and this is standard if you are really working hard in the gym and I get you know, I'm getting more than 8 hours sleep a night now I'm just going to be sore.
00:06:11:25 - 00:06:36:00
I'm asking my body to grow. I'm lifting heavy, so I'm going to be sore. It's just part of it. I have to stretch to hydrate, to feed myself properly and give my body what it needs to recover. But quite often it's sore. And I thought, Oh gosh, I got to go into the gym and I'm going to be training glutes today, which means a lot of volume, heavier weights.
00:06:36:00 - 00:07:02:02
You know, it really is when you're training legs or glutes, it's very it's very mental, right? It's very, very mental. And I knew it was going to be hard. I didn't feel like it. I just didn't feel like it. However, I'm committed to the outcome that I want, and I know that if I start negotiating with myself based on how I feel, I'm already losing.
00:07:02:04 - 00:07:23:15
So because energy management is so important to me, I don't want to be wasting time negotiating with myself. So I just went right to the gym and decided I was going to do glutes because I even considered, well, maybe I'll switch to upper body today. I thought, No, I'm just going to train my glutes and if I need to back off on the weights, I'll back off on the weights.
00:07:23:23 - 00:07:48:08
I'll do what I need to do, but I'm going to get it done. And, you know, it's going to be hard. So while I was warming up, I was really working on shifting my energy, getting out of that, Oh my God, this is going to be so hard. It's going to take so long. And just putting myself in the headspace of, you know, at least that you're strong, that you're capable, your body can do this.
00:07:48:08 - 00:08:11:00
You're going to give yourself grace, right? You're going to tune in and listen to your body, because my body tells me yes or no and your body tells you yes or no to. You just may not be paying attention to whether or not it's saying yes or no. And that's different than not feeling like it. Right. Like, if I try and load up with too much weight, my body will tell me, Nope, this is not happening today.
00:08:11:03 - 00:08:32:29
So I just went into it with the I know this is going to be hard. How can I allow it to be easier? And this is what I want to talk about because so many people are trying to pitch this message that you're going to be able to create amazing results without things being hard. And I wish I could tell you that that was true.
00:08:33:03 - 00:08:57:21
It's just not. So. Whether you're trying to do something in the gym, transform your body, maybe you're trying to lose weight, maybe you're trying to grow a business. It's going to be hard. It's going to be hard. I can't even begin to tell you how many face down moments I've had in my business, how many hard decisions that I've had to make, how much adversity I've had to face.
00:08:57:23 - 00:09:21:14
Being an entrepreneur is not for everyone. It is not a walk in the park. I have had to learn things. I have had to be confronted with my own limiting beliefs. I really had to you know, when you're when you're doing these hard things, it's very confronting, right? You have to look at the beliefs you hold about yourself, the stories you're telling yourself.
00:09:21:22 - 00:09:53:24
You have to look at your current identity and your ways of being. You have to stare all of that down. And it's it's really, really uncomfortable, which is really what it being hard is all about. It's uncomfortable. And most people are not willing to do the hard, you know, uncomfortable things. So is it that it's hard or is it that it's uncomfortable and we don't want to do uncomfortable things?
00:09:53:27 - 00:10:24:24
So like I said, in the beginning, many of my clients are really good at doing and pushing and forcing their way through. And part of the work that I'm doing with them is learning how to be in the discomfort of doing the hard things they've been avoiding, which in in many of their cases is learning how to slow down, learning how to say no, learning how to make rest a priority, learning how to have more fun, right?
00:10:24:24 - 00:11:06:09
Taking things off their plate, being in the discomfort of not taking care of everybody else, and actually what it means to make themselves a priority. Doing the hard things is about no longer avoiding, no longer avoid eating, doing the things that are going to create the results that you want. So if you're wanting to transform your body and you think you can do that by, you know, not changing how you eat, not moving regularly, not getting enough rest, you're kidding yourself.
00:11:06:11 - 00:11:35:04
And if you want permanent transformation, you're going to have to look at the beliefs that you hold about your body, about your physical health, about what you make healthy eating mean, about what beliefs you have about exercise. Does it feel like punishment or is it a way of loving your body? Because I can tell you the healthiest people out there know that exercise and eating healthy is the highest form of self-care as is rest.
00:11:35:06 - 00:12:12:00
So for me, when I was in the throes of my adrenal fatigue, the hardest thing for me to do, the most uncomfortable thing for me to do was slow down. And then when I thought I'd slowed down, I had to slow down more. I had to look at how I was showing up in the gym because the truth was And the truth is that some of the air, quote, healthiest people I know are actually not healthy because they're so good at doing the doing and doing the hard things.
00:12:12:03 - 00:12:38:14
They're actually avoiding doing the hard things that they need to be doing, which is slowing down and resting more, looking at where their energy is. So again, it comes back to the energy behind the doing. So when I was learning how to rest, I had to break down all the stories and beliefs that I had around. Rest was lazy, rest was unproductive, Rest was for those people.
00:12:38:14 - 00:12:59:05
I had things to do. What would it mean about me? It was so tied into my identity. I loved the identity of being that overachiever, you know, wearing, you know, busy is my badge of honor. I could do all the things and then, you know, give me a couple more things to do and I'll take care of everybody else while I'm doing all of those things.
00:12:59:07 - 00:13:22:04
So no wonder I got myself to a place of burnout. So in order for me to heal, I had to learn how to slow down and I had to be in the discomfort part of doing the hard thing, which was slowing down, which most people would say slowing down isn't hard. Lisa But when you're an overdue or slowing down, is the hard thing.
00:13:22:04 - 00:13:52:29
It is uncomfortable. So all of us have an opportunity to look at the things that we're doing in our lives. Are we avoiding doing hard things or are we doing hard things? But we're pushing through them because you're not going to be able to avoid discomfort. If you want change, not 100%, but you have to shift your energy behind it.
00:13:53:02 - 00:14:17:09
So when I was looking at how to make rest feel easy, so resting. So this is where it gets like feeling. I'm not talking in circles here, but resting for me was hard, so I had to take a step back and say, okay, this feels hard for me. How can I shift my energy to allow this to be easier?
00:14:17:12 - 00:14:41:13
How can I make this not feel torturous? Because resting felt torturous for me. So I had to remind myself about what extra rest was going to bring to me. Rest was going to help me heal. Rest was going to allow me to get stronger. Rest was going to allow me to do more. Ultimately, it wasn't going to take away from anything.
00:14:41:16 - 00:15:10:06
So I really had to learn how to honor and value rest. And that's when doing the hard thing. That's how I allowed it to be much easier. Okay. But I couldn't get around the discomfort of doing the uncomfortable, hard thing, arresting, which sounds so bizarre. So for many of you, I want you to look at where in your life you're avoiding doing the hard thing.
00:15:10:06 - 00:15:36:20
And it may look different to somebody else. For some people, doing the hard thing is putting one foot in front of the other for other people, doing the hard thing is learning how to slow down and do less. But make no mistake about it, you are going to have to do hard things. You are going to have to do hard things and they're going to be uncomfortable.
00:15:36:22 - 00:16:12:16
And you know what? 99.9% of the time you're not going to die. So as I tell my clients and the men and women that I work with inside the coaching groups that I support, you just have to lean in, allow it to be easy. You're remind yourself you're not going to die and get comfortable being uncomfortable. The more that you can get comfortable with being on comfortable, that's when the magic happens.
00:16:12:18 - 00:16:44:09
And in that discomfort, adjusting your energy. So even when it's uncomfortable, will you still find a way to win and you still find a way to honor your energy? So until next time, I would love to hear from you. Help over into my DMS in Instagram. Share your takeaways. What feels hard for you that you've been avoiding or what things are you doing that you're telling yourself is hard?
00:16:44:09 - 00:17:06:26
That if you could just shift your energy around it, you could allow it to be easier? What kind of results do you want to create in your life and in your business or with your health? Come and share over in Instagram with me. I would love to hear and I would love to support you. So until our next episode, take good care of you again.
00:17:06:26 - 00:17:18:14
Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for being here. I appreciate each and every one of you and I will see you on the next episode.
