Put aside pleasure and pursue the arduous.
St. Thomas Aquinas wrote about this. There are thousands of internet fingerpainters who will tell you what he really meant. Ignore them all—the inferior quality of discourse will make you sad. What they say is informational—about the fingerpainters’ mentality, not St. Thomas Aquinas or his ideas.
I care about the idea of deliberately choosing the harder way and avoiding the easier, softer way.
Not merely because it is the harder way. But because that’s likely to be where treasure is to be found.
Treasure is an experience, not the objective. Treasure is the result of doing the harder things. You do not choose the harder way because you expect to be given a trophy at the end. No, the reward of the harder way is in itself, regardless of the outcome.
I’ll give you a simple example. Pull-ups. The next-to-last and last pull-up you can do are hard. The easier, softer way would be to pound them out while they are easy, and quit before things get tough. You look awesome to all of those people watching you.
Those last straining, wobbly ones are not fun. You’re struggling at the edge of your abilities. But that where you get stronger physically—and mentally. Where you look weakest, where you struggle and perhaps fail? That’s where you find the treasure.
“I can do hard things that hurt.”
There is power in knowing this truth about yourself.
If you face a decision and don’t know what to do, choosing against the easier, softer way is a reliable choice. Even if you’re wrong you will get stronger.
Or, put it another way: in life, run straight into your shitstorms.