the paradox of easy

We all look at ease as an angel with a halo. To some extent, ease has become a currency in our lightning speed culture where we all need products and services that are fast, easy and convenient.  

Ease has become an important attribute for marketers as they pitch their products. But ease is not entirely white; like all other things in the world, it has shades of gray as well.

What’s easy to do is also easy not to do. In fact, this paradox is what somewhat inspired me to start this daily blog. This is something that Jim Rohn addressed in one of his impactful speeches and it really stuck with me. Eating an apple every single day is easy to do, it isn’t that difficult, right? But eating an apple every single day is also easy not to do. Writing a couple of sentences in your journal, participating in a meditation practice for just 5 minutes, or in the context of this blog, reading an essay every single day is easy to do. But it’s also easy not to do.

The benefits of easy only come to us when we act. Otherwise, it’s pointless. And that’s why it’s so important to make easy and acting on it a daily habit. Because when you integrate an easy thing that elevates you and your well-being today, tomorrow, the day after that and so forth and so on, you set up yourself for success.

Along with ease, we need consciousness as well. Eating five Hershey’s Kisses every day is also easy, but if we keep repeating this tiny, erroneous behavior every single day, it will eventually lead to us to poor health. The same applies for smoking cigarettes day in and day out, drinking your $4 Starbucks coffee every morning, or watching TV for 3 hours straight after work.

The things that harm you have a leverage when it comes to easy, but if we choose we can tip the scale but doing the right things in an easy manner, by cultivating tiny habits that take us towards a better life.

Easy can work for you and against you and ultimately it’s your choice to decide which road you’re going to take. Either you can take long strides in the easy, shiny road, or you take an easy step every single day in the road less traveled.

In the end, it all comes down to choosing easy either now or later. As the weightlifting champion and modern Stoic Jerzy Gregory writes, “Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.”