How to Make Simple Things Easy
We all know that thought: “It’s really simple, so why is it so hard for me?”
I used to believe that “simple” and “easy” were perfect synonyms. That’s why I thought that something had to be seriously wrong with me for not being able to do the simplest things: establishing a daily routine, or even only waking up and going to bed at the same hours every day, doing the things I know I have to do to be happier or healthier or work on the things that would definitely help me reach my goals.
I mean, it’s only about getting out of bed, it’s just doing the stuff I know would help me to make progress. So why is it so hard?
Simple and Easy Are Not Always the Same
The more I thought about it, the more I got this idea that maybe “simple” and “easy” are not the same thing after all. That, in fact, a simple thing can be extremely difficult. For example, the idea of being in the present moment. All you have to do is to fully experience your surroundings and to stop thinking. Simple, right? Well, definitely not easy. And while we’re at it, why not taking it to a concept we don’t only consider not being easy, but even impossible: the idea of time-travel. The concept is pretty simple though, we only would have to change our direction in time. But I don’t have to tell you that this is not easy at all.
But then, in some cases, and moreover for some people, it seems that “simple” actually is “easy”.
- So how do they do that?
- How does “simple” become “easy”?
- What is the process behind it?
In correlation, I started to think about the idea of something being “difficult” or “hard”. What does that mean exactly? After all, nothing in the world has the inherent property of being “difficult”. Nothing is “hard” by nature. So where does this idea come from?
In reality, if something is “simple”, but difficult for you, “difficult” just means that you don’t know how to do it (yet). If you look at it that way, it’s always about a lack of resources. You can acquire knowledge about different ways of doing something, you can learn how to use certain tools that might help you, and you need time for gaining all this knowledge, put it into practice, and repeat until you master a skill. That is until something that seemed difficult in the beginning becomes easy in the end.
The Path to Simplicity
Let’s say you want to get up earlier. It’s perfectly possible that you just don’t know how to do it, so of course, that makes it really difficult. And I’m not talking about the physical act.
When I wanted to get up earlier, I thought that there wasn’t much more to it than just physically get up and out of bed; that’s it, very simple. But in the end, it wasn’t that easy: I kept hitting the snooze button for two more hours, I literally couldn’t keep my eyes open, I felt tired, I felt unhappy to get up, I just didn’t want to do it, though I had decided to do so the evening before.
So I googled how to get up earlier and I learned a lot of things related to sleep quality, sleep hygiene, nutrition, exercise, habits, and motivation. However, I never would have thought that it would be such a broad project, with so much knowledge to gain. I tried some tools and strategies, I even practiced getting up during the day, because it turned out that apart from good sleeping hygiene, I had to overwrite certain patterns in my brain and literally train my body to a specific reaction when the alarm went off in the morning. And please note how this doesn’t sound “simple” anymore at all.
However, after some time, getting up early wasn’t such a big deal for me anymore, in fact, it became pretty “easy”. But there was a process behind it that didn’t seem as simple as “just getting up earlier” once I had started it.
And Suddenly It’s Not Simple Anymore
So simple is not easy, but easy will be simple in retrospective?
“Simple” is relative. It’s relative to if something is, or rather became, easy for you. “Simple” means that there is no complexity to it anymore, that you somehow took out (or just automatized) a lot of layers. That happens when you figure something out and truly understand it. Remember your first math classes? A simple calculation task such as multiplication was quite impossible to master when you tried the first time, but when you learned the logic behind it and automatized it using tools like multiplication tables it became both, simple and easy. So we can say that “simple” is about concepts and understanding complexity, while “easy” refers to the action of putting these concepts into practice, and this is where the shift and process happen.
Some of us have just heard about and started with certain concepts, while others invested more work in them already. So when someone describes something as “simple” or even “easy”, it’s only their subjective perception, it doesn’t mean it will be the same for you. Maybe they have already accomplished the regarding subject, which would mean that they already have gained the knowledge and tools to make it easy, so they see and understand the whole finished picture and therefore call it simple retrospectively. Or maybe they haven’t even tried it themselves and although they seem to be convinced of knowing the theoretical way, they have actually no idea what they are talking about.
Find What Works for You
The process of gaining knowledge and tools, as well as the resources themselves, may vary a lot for every individual. We all have strengths and weaknesses, we all learn new things in different ways and we all have different needs.
For example, if you want to learn what works for you in order to get up earlier, during your research you may find a lot of things that don’t work out for you in the same way as they did for others. I came across a bunch of tips and tricks, but most of them just didn’t do anything for me at all. So while I have to lay down in my bed in the middle of the day, set my alarm to three minutes or so (just enough time to get comfortable and lazy) and after that get up and out of bed, again and again, others find flying alarm clocks very helpful.
So in order to find your own path to simplicity, in this example, you might need to take actions to sleep longer, find tools to sleep better, develop a sensation of excitement to get up in the morning, or go and see a doctor because you might even be suffering from some physical condition that causes general fatigue or sleeping disorders and needs to be treated.
In the End, It’s About Yourself
If you want simple things to be easy for you, be open to the probability that you’ll have to learn a lot of things that you didn’t have in mind at first. Think of it as a subject that has to be studied and explored with all the facets that are important to you as an individual. Or as a muscle that has to be trained regularly before it is able to perform the task you aim for. If you think about an idea as simple or easy, don’t compare yourself to others who are at a whole different stage of learning. Think about what it means for you and your needs, what other concepts are connected to it in your own mind, and find out which “gaps” you have to fill in order to understand. But the most important step in the shift from “simple” to “easy” is the will to take action and the time to learn, try, and practice.
Originally published at https://lisa-stawiarski.com on October 12, 2020.
