Nina prided herself on being efficient. If something felt uncomfortable, she’d find a “smarter” shortcut.

Instead of calling a client who hadn’t paid, because confrontation felt hard, she’d send a polite email.
And when that didn’t work she’s just send another email and another, because it was a lot easier then getting on the phone.

Instead of teaching her staff a new system because training felt messy, she’d just jump in whenever the employee get stuck.

Nina hide behind the label of “lazy” or “working smarter,” depending on her mood that day, or more like the activity that is.

Either way, it had her procrastinating on actually solving the problem, making her do a lot more work in the end.

One day, in session, I had Nina purposely do the exercise in a more challenging way.
At first, Nina resisted. “But why? I don’t like to do hard work,” she told me.

We continued to talk until something clicked in her brain and Nina realized there IS a purpose in doing hard work… just for the sake of doing hard work.

During the next session, Nina shared how there was a problem with getting an order. “Previously, I would have just emailed them my situation. Now I got the phone and solved it. Not only did it take much faster, but it’s also not sitting on my head at night.”


Thinking Skills 
While you are doing any task, you without even realizing it, are using your 28 thinking skills.
When the thinking skills you need to use are strong, doing the task happens easily.
If the thinking skill you need to use is weak, doing the task is a challenge.
The struggle that Nina had, came from a weak thinking skill of Perseverance.


Perseverance
When Nina said, “I don’t like doing hard work,” I understood it was her fixed mindset talking.

Just like when you go to a gym, and you pick up 100 lbs.
It's not because you’re gonna need to pick up 100 lbs on a regular basis.
Sure, you do it to build muscle, but you also show your brain that you can do hard things.
It builds confidence, it builds the capacity to do more. As it becomes easier to pick up 100lbs, you’re able to pick up more and more weight.

You do it to show your brain you can do hard things. That you are capable of more than you imagine.
When you do hard tasks, when you preserve, you callus the mind.
You develop the ability to deal with whatever life throws at you.

This way, you don’t let little excuses get in your way of doing the work.
You don’t give up just because it’s hard.

And here’s what’s wild: Once your brain learns that it can tolerate “hard,” your whole life gets easier.
You don’t have to work harder because you’re going around something that made you feel uncomfortable.
You stop wasting energy avoiding discomfort and start using it to create results.

That’s what happened with the conversation with Nina. She realized she was working harder because she didn’t want to do hard work.


5 Exercises to Improve Perseverance

I wanted to make sure Nina’s growth mindset was really, really developed, so over the next few weeks I gave her these 5 exercises to do. You can do them at home to help you develop your own growth mindset:

1) I had Nina reframe challenging tasks as an adventure. How can you make this task fun? How can it be enjoyable? You tell your brain you’re gonna figure it out together and run towards the hard task instead of away from.

2) Whenever a task was hard, I had Nina imagine what it would feel like after the task is over. Often we think about the pain of doing the task, but we don’t think about the reward after. When we visualize how we’ll feel, our brain starts getting excited about doing it and is more motivated to do it.

3) Track little wins. So often it’s hard to persevere because the end goal is far, far away. If we can see the little wins along the way, your brain gets some reward and sees that it’s worth doing.

4) I had Nina do one hard thing daily. The entire point of doing the hard thing was simply to do the hard thing. I could be a cold shower, call a potential partner, reorganize a messy draw that it’s to daunting. Doesn’t make a difference. Just do something hard.

5) After a hard task is over, I had Nina take a moment to reflect on how she did AND what were the results of doing it even tho she didn't want to. Her brain starts stacking proof that the price is doing hard things is worth it




Avoiding hard things doesn’t make life easier, it just makes everything slower, and heavier.

Nina didn’t become more productive by finding shortcuts. She did it by facing discomfort head-on and building the mental muscle to handle whatever was thrown at her.


Cheers to Peak Brain Performance!