Why Can't Easy Just be Easy? |

Our natural human instinct is to make things hard.

This instinct has grown with us through our childhood into our teenage years and is pretty much in full bloom as adults.

The seeds are planted with ideas like ‘hard work will reap great rewards’ and ‘if you work hard for something, you will get it’.

And while I don’t disagree with either of those, I wonder why we have to use the word ‘hard’ before work?

Can’t we just work at something without having to struggle?

My yoga teacher (Jill) shared this idea with us today in relation to our yoga practice. To set the scene, this is a power yoga class that I have recently grown very fond of – because in power yoga, you work ‘hard’.

And I feel the need to work hard to ensure that any benefit I receive was properly earned.

But today in class, Jill shared something that made me think. She said, ‘try making your poses easy today.’

Why is she letting us off the hook? What happened to ‘try going deeper into the pose’? Or what about ‘no pain, no gain?’ This easy thing was going to be hard.

The first difficult pose came along. I strained my head, face, neck, shoulders, legs to create the perfect pose. I was pissed. How much longer did we have to do this pose? Go deeper. What? Are you insane? This is starting to hurt. I hate this pose. I hate yoga. This will be my last class. Can I come out of this pose yet? Screw you, I’m headed to child’s pose.

My mind was making things hard.

Jill noticed. She said ‘now, try that pose again, but make it easy’.

I took a deep breath. I focused on how my body was moving. My mind repeated ‘easy, easy, easy’ over and over again.

And there I was. In the pose. It didn’t feel so bad. Huh. In fact, it felt great. Can I go deeper? Whoa! I can! What about stronger arms? Oh yeah, there they are. This is fun!

Hard. Easy.

Let’s do a quick exercise to help make this concept more real.

Take this moment and notice what’s going on in your face and neck. Is your forehead all scrunched up because you are trying to read this as quickly as you can so you can get back to work? What about your eyes? Are they straining? Your mouth. Are you pursing your lips? Straight-lined? Is your neck stretched out?

If you noticed any of the above (or anything else about your face that feels strained), then you have felt ‘hard’.

Now, soften your face. Make reading this easy. Relax your forehead. Close your eyes for a moment and let them relax. Smile! THIS is easy.

The same concept can be applied to your everyday mayhem.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself that this will be an ‘easy day’. Start yourself out right. After all, you are functioning adult who has built a nice life for yourself. Why does every day have to be hard?

Tell your family to have a great day – and let any other nudges go. Don’t make their day harder for them. Help them make it easy.

Meetings, conference calls, emails – enter each activity with a soft face, and open mind, and no preconceived perceptions that something has or will go wrong. Allow easy to happen. Don’t look for hard.

Easy is not selfish. Easy is not wasted time. Easy is not lazy. Easy is not lack of accomplishment.

Easy is letting things happen without trying to control them. Easy is assuming that things will work the way they should and not waiting for the worst. Easy is trusting others, backing off, and finding the smile during the middle of the day.

Hard has become our normal. And letting things be easy is hard. So how about the next hard thing you do is let that thing be easy?

If You Do Just One Thing:

Take a moment to simply try the face release exercise above. Simply being aware of what ‘hard’ and ‘easy’ mean in your body is a big first step to making everything easier.