There’s a lot of advice out there about doing certain things that will make your life easier.

Things like just let your goal go, be “open”, don’t work on your goal so much, etc.

At first glance, it raises the B.S. alarms. We think it only caters to the instant gratification crowd. The advice seems a bit woo-woo and contrary to the real world.

But the thing is – those things work.

What’s the catch?

You can’t apply the advice without doing the hard stuff first.

Because it’s by doing the hard stuff that allows you to easily do the easy stuff and see the results.

Authors tend to unknowingly perpetuate this frustration because they offer this advice and they say if you just do this, it’ll work.

And it will.

BUT, the readers can’t do it. They can’t apply it. Because they didn’t do the hard work first.

Here’s a classic example.

The idea of acting on your flashes of intuition.

When I first heard that principle of an idea flashing in your mind that will help you achieve your goal, I scoffed. This was way back when I was a mere child. I thought it was hocus pocus talk.

But I tried it to give it a shot and it never happened so I dismissed it.

Fast forward many years later, when I actually focus on a SPECIFIC goal, remind myself of it continuously, take action on it, think day and night about it, the flash of insight eventually came.

And it was brilliant.

A masterpiece.

And notice the big missing piece here.

I didn’t do any of that other stuff before. My goal was vague, I thought about it once in a while, never really took action and lo and behold, the brilliant idea never came.

It’s as if the self improvement industry is split into two camps. The “hard” and the “soft”.

The “hard” camp is all that we are familiar with, the “real world” stuff like taking action, discipline, persistence, etc.

The “soft” camp is all that is unknown, the stuff that’s hard to swallow – letting go, trusting in a higher power, having faith it will all work out when things seem their bleakest, etc.

It’s as if the two camps butt heads completely.

We don’t really trust the “soft” camp and when we try it out, it inevitably fails.

And we don’t consistently apply the advice we hear in the “hard” camp, so we never get to a level where we can truly apply the advice in the “soft” camp.

And therein lies the catch 22.

You want life to get easier by trying to apply the “soft” camp advice directly from the get go, but you can’t really successfully do it until you apply the “hard” camp advice.

But it’s rare for people to successfully apply the “hard” camp advice to get to the point where they can apply the “soft” camp advice.

The only way out of it is to start in the “hard” camp first. Really master it. Appreciate the fundamentals. Honor the timeless wisdom in it.

And when you reach a point where you have mastered it, you find yourself successfully applying what you learned in the “soft” camp with greater ease and with results this time.

And you no longer see the two camps as butting heads all the time but you see the great synergy between the two and how one leads to another.

Life doesn’t get easier “directly”.

You can’t start from the beginning and hope to take advantage of all the “soft” camp advice directly.

You must apply the “hard” camp advice to be able to easily apply the “soft” camp advice and see the results. And as I’m reading over this to proofread and correct spelling mistakes, I know that this might sound confusing to some people.

And for others, it will make perfect sense.

I don’t think this is one of those things you can really articulate.

Only experience.

And for those who have mastered the “hard” camp and have seen the fruits of applying the advice in the “soft” camp, and have stumbled upon the same realizations as this article, they will understand completely what I’m talking about.

If this is flying over your head, it might be because you still haven’t mastered the “hard” camp yet. Keep at it. And you’ll find the “soft” camp advice you read will begin to make more and more sense. You will look at it differently now and when you apply it, you will see the results.

Remember, life doesn’t get easier directly.

It’s always hard before it gets easy.