Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Further your Lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name's Chris, I am your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you Episode 166 today, and we're talking about a topic which has really pushed me into some conviction and it's a bit of a personal reflection. The concept has come from a bit of a personal reflection because I was challenged by this when I read it myself, and the quote is by Jersey Gregorick and it says easy choices, hard life, hard choices, easy life. And the basis of this quote is that if we decide to do things which make our life seem easy in the short term, we will have to make some harder actions later in life. And if we make the hard choices in the short term, things can be easier in the long term. Now, with this, I need to give you a bit more context and I'll explain it to you right now before we really dive into it.

But the reality is easy choices, hard life. Basically, we're talking about instant gratification. We choosing the easier path often involves seeking immediate pleasure or avoiding discomfort, so this might mean like procrastinating or unhealthy eating or avoiding the challenging tasks the consequences of this. It can lead to long-term difficulties with poor health, financial instability, lack of personal or professional growth, and the short-term ease results in compounded difficulties over time. And the short-term ease results in compounded difficulties over time. Where, on the contrary, if we look at hard choices, easy life is delayed gratification. That's what the main point of this whole episode is. When we opt into the harder path, it involves making decisions that will be uncomfortable in the short term but are super beneficial in the long run, and this includes habits like exercising or saving money and continuous learning. Run. And this includes habits like exercising or saving money and continuous learning. And rewards of this are these choices build resilience, it improves our health and it enhances our skills, and it leads to a more fulfilling life or a stable life, and the short-term struggle results in compounded benefits over time.

Now, a good example of this is if I choose to just not eat junk food today, it might mean I don't have to go spend three hours in the gym to work that off right, whereas if you're consistently doing walking as well, and where you weren't doing any exercise at all, you might be creating heart issues. I'm not saying that's what it will do, but because you're just doing a small thing, you're making the decision. I'm just going to do this consistently over a long time, rather than trying to cram it and fix yourself up at a very last time or at a very last resort when you've already sick or something. It's not going to make much of a difference. So this is the topic that we're going to get into today. It is deep. There's going to be a few different ways that we're going to get into this. I know it all sounds easy, but hear me out, stick around. I think it'll be worth it for you.

Let's roll the intro. So how can we apply all of this to our life? What can we do? And I know, as I said before, all of this can sound a little bit easy and what we're about to discuss is probably going to sound a little bit cliche and easy, but the reality is they're hard To put these things into practice, to show up daily, to be consistent. It's hard work, and that's what we're going to be talking about when we apply things in our daily life. Like, for instance, if we talk about health, we can choose to exercise and eat healthy, and this may be hard, but it leads to a longer, healthier life. So by doing the small thing today gives us the long-term like short-term pain for long-term gain. That's essentially what we're talking about here.

Finances If we have a budget, if we learn how to spend properly, if we learn how to save properly, if we learn how to invest properly and do it on a consistent basis rather than focusing on impulses, it does ensure that we have the financial security. The same thing applies with our careers. When we take on a challenging project and we seek continuous improvement, we can advance our career, we can advance our personal growth, whereas if you delay doing that because you're too scared, you won't make the move in the right direction in terms of becoming a better version of yourself. This also applies with relationships. I'm just giving you some examples here of how we can apply it. When we put effort into communicating and having a conversation, even if it's a tough conversation or a scary conversation, it leads to a stronger and more meaningful connection. That's really what we're trying to talk about here. What are some of the other things that we can talk about here?

For me personally, a good example of this is business and running. Running I have to train for 21 weeks to do a 50K ultramarathon and those 21 or 22 weeks. I have to show up, I have to do the daily work so that in the long run I know that I can do the long run Building my business. At the moment I'm looking at this from a seven-year perspective. I'm not going to be successful overnight, but I do need to do daily things. I need to show up every day, I need to work and get the experience. I need to figure out how do we make better profitability, how do we grow the business? How do I take on staff? How do I learn to leverage money better? How do I learn to benefit from cashflow? How do I learn about payment terms? All these different things. They only come from doing these small decisions on a daily basis and keeping in system, because then things start to snowball. In the longer run, things will just work better because I've got the experience, we've figured it out and we now have all that knowledge, power, understanding, experience under our belts. It makes it a lot easier.

So, health and fitness I already touched on this a little bit. For me, originally, before I started losing weight, I was doing running, but then the running didn't cut it. It was eating all the naughty foods, cutting out that junk food on a regular basis rather than eating the junk food on a regular basis meant I didn't have to do as much in the gym. It made it a lot easier. So you'll want to find the quick win.

I think back in the day I remember when they released Krispy Kremes. Now, if you're here in Australia, the MCG in Melbourne, victoria, is our Melbourne cricket ground. It's huge, massive, I think they said when the first Krispy Kremes opened in Victoria. They said to burn off the calories of one of those, you would have to basically run from where that Krispy Kreme shop was to the MCG, which was about 45 kilometers. That's how far you had to run to burn off the calorie of one donut. Now 45K is basically a half marathon. Of one donut Now 45K is basically a half marathon. Last time I ran 45 kilometers it probably took me five to five and a half hours. Yep, so you eat one Krispy Kreme in 30 seconds and it's going to take you five and a half hours to burn it off. You see my point here Making decisions. I'm not saying don't have Krispy Kremes, I'm just saying don't have 10 Krispy Kremes, right, because if you do, you're going to have to be doing a lot of exercise to offset it. And it's not about being skinny, it's not about jazz, it's just seriously about just keeping yourself healthy and fit.

Another example in career development we pursue further education, or when we take on challenging projects, or when we take on a new role or when we get a promotion. All these things help us grow. It's not going to be easy at the start. It's going to be rough. It's going to be tough. We're going to have to get uncomfortable, we're going to have to learn new things. We might have to be humble and maybe we make some mistakes and we get a bit embarrassed, but that's part of the career developing progress or the process, right? Is we do all these things now, like if you're having to learn how to bake, if you're having to learn how to cook, like it takes a lot of work to figure it out because it's not easy, you don't, you've never done it before. But once you've done it 10 times, it's like yeah, whatever, it's simple, right, it's the same thing. This all same applies for financial decisions, relationships.

Mental resilience is a big one. How do we build that mental toughness? Making the hard decisions today, setting in the boundaries to remove the things that really do trigger us off, but also like the balance of instant and delayed gratification. Do we really want this gratification just today, or are we wanting a long-term gratification over a long period of time, for that longer-term happiness? Looking at this, we can think about daily habits. How do we apply things in a small means per day to keep things consistent over a longer period of time? Which compound which will give us better benefits? Right, it's like back in the day they used to say I don't know who says it, I don't know if it's proven Do 10,000 steps a day or do a 30 minute walk. It just helps in the long run to keep yourself healthy, your heart moving and your blood pumping.

We need to be thinking about our long-term vision. What is your long-term vision? Where do you want to be in 10 years? What is that going to look like? Are you wanting to be? What do you want to be doing with your budget? What about your health? What about your relationships? What are you doing today and every day for the next 10 years to ensure that those things, consistently, will be where you want them to be? There's things that we can control and there's things that we can't until we get opportunity, until situations occur.

I know people that have said oh, I want to have a business and I want to be a business owner in a couple of years. It's okay. What's your business now? Oh, I don't have one. How can you be a business owner if you haven't? How can you have a successful business or be operating, have a cafe or something, if you don't even have a plan to get there? Figure out what are the steps you've got to do and work towards it, and it might mean learning, reading, taking crash courses, getting help, getting a mentor, doing all these little things to get us to where we want to be.

I've got a list of questions that we can ask ourselves. I'm just going to chuck out a few here. I'm not going to answer them, it's really just a playback to yourself, but if there's something that tickles my fancy, I might dive into it a bit more. Just going to have a sip of coffee, but questions we can be asking ourselves. What are some of the easy choices we tend to make? For me it's donuts, man, donut, I'm down to have a donut. So those little things is what we're talking about.

What are some of the long-term consequences of these easy choices. It's not doing me any benefits, is it? What are some hard choices we've made in the past and how have they benefited us? I think learning how to save early and managing my money at a younger age has been really beneficial for me, but that's an example right. In what areas of my life can I start making harder choices for better outcomes? Look, I could probably list out 10 things that I can do better. It's hard to do it. I get it.

So I think my challenge to you is can we find one thing and focus on that one thing, get that in control and then we move on to that? How do we handle discomfort when faced with hard choices? What are some of the strategies we can use to make hard choices easy to follow through on? Yeah, you've got to think about that as well. It's easy to say, okay, I'm not going to do this, but how are you going to handle it? Have a plan. Who are some of the people that you can look up to or leverage in terms of who has gone through this and consistently made the hard choices, and what can we learn from them? How can we stay motivated to make the hard choices when the easy path is so tempting, a hundred percent. You've got to figure this out. You've got to have a game plan. What role do habits play in making these hard decisions for you? You want to make these things easy for you, right? If they can become a habit, just a back of your hand nature kind of style. You need to figure out that as well.

I think this is an important one. How can I support others in making hard choices for a better life? Maybe it's accountability, maybe it's reaching out with a friend. Maybe it's doing what I'm doing here and sharing with other peoples and challenging people, keeping people honest. I do have a couple of tips that I will share with you.

I think number one is we do need to start small. We can't expect to be going in and just changing our lives with all these hard choices. When I wanted to lose weight I'm talking about 10 years ago I went cold turkey. I cut out all sugar and I made a really hard decision and it was hard. But maybe we just need to make some small ones and be consistent with it. We do need to set clear goals, right? We need to define what are we trying to achieve here in the long run and make sure we align our choices with those goals and also align our values as well. Find some accountability I just discussed about that. Find someone that can keep you honest or that you can keep honest, that can help you get through those hard choices, because they're not easy. We also need to reflect regularly, like on a regular basis, with this, because if we're just making like, just trying to move forward and we're not actually coming back and just regrouping and reflecting and seeing how the outcomes have occurred from our choices, we might miss opportunities to adjust. So do reflect on a regular basis.

I think the most important one is celebrate the successes or the small wins. As you do make the progress, as you do get the hard choice win, make sure you do have a positive outcome from it. Celebrate the positive outcome, reinforce it with positivity. Make sure you get that gratification from the sense of okay, I've done this hard thing. No, I don't get to have that other thing that I would like, but I am going to celebrate it and I'm going to do this to make sure it reinforces my head. Yes, I want to do more of this. That is the secret here. That will just build that momentum very quickly. That's what I've got today.

Folks, if this resonated with you, please do share it with someone. If you've got any questions or you want to continue the conversation, you can jump over to the socials. You can jump over to the YouTube and leave a comment. Let's continue the conversation. I'd love to hear from you what are some of the things you're doing or how do you handle this kind of conversation. It's not easy, right? I know we want to be making easy choices, but it creates a hard life. But if we can make the hard choices, I guarantee you we will have the easy life. That's it today. Really do appreciate you being here. You have a wonderful day. Cheers.