Why "This Shouldn't Be So Hard" Is the Exact Reason It Is — And How to Stop Letting One Thought Derail Every Goal You've Set
You told yourself you'd be consistent this time.
You made the plan. You had the motivation. You meant every word of it — the yoga, the early mornings, the eating better, the showing up for your business in the ways you keep saying you will. And for a little while, it was working. And then it got hard. And somewhere in the friction, a thought crept in:
This shouldn't be so hard.
That thought — quiet, almost reasonable-sounding — is 90% of why the goal is hard in the first place. And until you see it for what it is, it's going to keep doing its job.
Let me tell you what I mean.
My Wrist, Whole30, and the Most Obvious Thing I Refused to See
For about three months at the end of 2025, my wrist was in pain. Not dramatic — but enough. I do Pilates regularly (shout out to Ember), and I started noticing I couldn't fully weight-bear in push-ups or planks. I was modifying everything. I'd have my father-in-law, who's a chiropractor, adjust it — it would feel okay for twenty minutes, I'd ice it, and then we'd repeat the whole cycle.
Meanwhile, I was eating the way a lot of us eat in November and December. More sugar. More of everything, really. The holiday version of myself, which — we know. We know what that feels like.
Then January hit and I was ALL in on a reset. I started Whole30 on January 3rd: meat, fruit, vegetables, no inflammatory foods, no grains, no dairy. And because I was genuinely so sick of feeling sluggish and bloated, it felt relatively easy to stick to.
Four days in.
FOUR days.
We went into push-ups in Pilates class, finished the whole series, and I realized — my wrist didn't hurt. Four days of removing inflammatory food. That's it. That's the whole solution that three months of adjustments and ice packs and frustration couldn't crack.
I finished the thirty days feeling great. And then the rules lifted.
I told myself I'd keep eating the Whole30 way at home and just be flexible when we went out. Within two weeks, I was completely back to my old patterns. And my wrist hurt again.
I remember standing in my kitchen telling my husband: "Damn it, Peege. I have to eat healthy again. How dumb is it that I have to eat healthy for my wrist to not hurt?"
And then I heard myself.
That right there — "how dumb is it that I have to" — is the thought. That resistance to what's actually required. My brain was arguing with my own reality. And that argument was taking up more energy than just eating the vegetables would have ever cost me.
The Client Who Couldn't Get Back to Yoga (Sound Familiar?)
I want to tell you about one of my clients, because I think her story is going to land somewhere specific in you.
She and I are working together on building a life that actually feels balanced — and I'll drop a hint here that balance is a feeling, not a circumstance. It's created internally. More on that in a future episode.
She recently saw a photo of herself and didn't love what she saw. Specifically her arms. And she has an event this summer — same dress, similar setting — and she wants to look at those photos and think, look at you.
So we mapped it out. What does that goal actually require? For her, it's yoga. She used to practice consistently. She felt amazing. Her arms looked great. But her life has changed — kids are busier, her schedule has more moving parts, the pace of everything has picked up. And getting back to daily yoga has felt genuinely harder than it used to.
One day, she said it: "It used to not be this hard. My arms just looked good. I could do yoga every day and it was just easy."
It used to be easier. This is harder than it should be. Why can't it just be like it was before?
This is the thought that's blocking her — not her schedule, not her kids' activities, not even her motivation level. It's the resistance to the effort required now, in this season, in this version of her life.
What's Actually Happening When You Think This
Here's the thing nobody names clearly enough: when you think this shouldn't be so hard, you're not just expressing frustration. You're spending your energy arguing with reality. And reality doesn't care. It just keeps being what it is while you burn out resisting it.
What makes this particularly sneaky is that the thought sounds like wisdom. Like you're being reasonable. Like you're just noticing something true. But underneath it is an old identity — a past version of you for whom this actually WAS easier. And you're grieving her. You're holding on to her. And you're using her as evidence that your current situation is wrong.
That grief is real, by the way. I'm not skipping past it. It makes sense that you'd miss the version of yourself who could eat what she wanted and feel fine, or do yoga every day without thinking about it. Seasons change. Bodies change. Life circumstances change. And there's real grief in that.
But when the grief turns into resistance — when the resistance becomes the reason you don't try — that's when it becomes the problem. Because you're not just mourning the old version. You're using her as an excuse to stay stuck.
The Shift That Makes Effort Lighter
The reframe here isn't "think positively about your goal!" That's not it. The shift is simpler and more honest than that.
It's this: What if this is just what it takes right now — and that's okay?
Not "this is fine." Not "I love how hard this is." Just: this is what's required. I want the result. So I'm going to do what it takes, without spending energy resenting the requirement.
When I stopped arguing with the fact that I need to eat anti-inflammatory foods for my wrist to stop hurting, something changed. Not because it became magically easy or enjoyable. But because I stopped fighting it. The friction dropped. The vegetables are still vegetables. But they stopped feeling like a punishment.
For my client, when we shifted from "it used to be easier" to "this is what it takes right now" — her relationship to the effort changed. Not overnight, but genuinely. And when your relationship to the effort changes, the effort becomes lighter.
How to Catch This Thought Before It Catches You
Here's what I want you to do with this:
Start by just noticing. The next time you feel that specific kind of frustrated resistance toward a goal — pause. Ask yourself: Is there a part of me that believes this shouldn't require this much effort? If yes, that's the work.
Then get curious about what changed. My body changed. My client's season changed. Change is just reality — it doesn't have to mean something bad. But when we make it mean "something is wrong with me" or "something is wrong with my situation," we add a layer of suffering that has nothing to do with the actual goal.
And finally, journal on this: What do I keep telling myself should be easier?
Write it down without editing. Let it surface. These thoughts are often so far below the conscious level that we don't even know they're running the show. The moment you see them — really see them — they lose so much power.
One Last Thing
The thought "this shouldn't be so hard" feels like honesty. It feels like frustration. It feels like you're just noticing a problem.
But it's actually resistance. And resistance is always more exhausting than the thing you're resisting.
You don't have to love the effort. You don't have to pretend the vegetables are exciting or that yoga at 5am is your favorite thing. You just have to stop spending energy arguing with what's required — and start spending it doing the work.
That's where the momentum lives.
If you want to go deeper on this — on the thoughts that are quietly running your business, your goals, your follow-through — this is exactly what we work on inside Industry Icon. Not more strategy. Not another content plan. The internal shift that makes the external work feel possible. DM me "ICON" on Instagram or head to livewellwithkell.com to learn more.
And if this resonated? Go listen to Episode 119 of Simply Own It — I share the full stories and we get into the real-time shifts you can make today.
