Hello extraordinary humans,

Happy new year everyone, I hope your holidays were pleasant and restful!

I got the flu..which was not what we thought was going to happen but it just meant I celebrated a week later so I’m still eating holiday chocolate :)

New Years is typically a time for goal setting and reflection and this year I wanted to share one of the latter, and something I have been reflecting on over the past month:

What difficulty setting are you selecting?

In life, in training, for a given activity…

If you’ve ever played a video game, you’ll be familiar with the part where the game asks you what difficulty level you want:

• Easy mode: more story than skill, experience the game without a lot of challenge
• Moderate: a bit of both, challenging but still mostly comfortable
• Hard mode: Only fools, the terrifyingly disciplined and the unusually obsessed dare to try this one

Depending on what you choose, your experience of the game will change.

Maybe you’ll have more fun, maybe you’ll work really hard, maybe you’ll get really frustrated and quit in a fit of RAGE.

So, when you’re looking at the goals you have set for this year or month…what difficulty level do you want to play them at?

• Easy? Moderate? Hard?
• and what does that look like?
• What does that experience feel like?
• Is that what you want?

For example:

Easy mode for a goal might look like choosing to do the minimum amount required to start moving in that new direction or paying to have someone do part of the work for you. It could FEEL fun, light, EASY.

Hard mode could look like putting a lot of new technique into your act or working to failure as often as possible. It could feel challenging, difficult, like hard work.

Now, there is technically no wrong answer here, easy mode isn’t always better than hard and vice versa. However, we who love extraordinary things are often way more inclined to choose hard mode and this is where it can become limiting.

Hard mode is a beautiful thing, it’s getting shit done and holding yourself to a high level of accountability. BUT it burns energy and resources and can be stressful. It’s important to not choose hard mode for everything. It’s important to be selective about hard mode and honest about what that experience will be.

Hard mode is not the only pathway to high level achievements. It is ONE option, remember even people who select easy or balanced mode get to finish the video game. In fact they are often more likely to finish and have fun along the way!

Things that are never a good fit for hard mode:

• Injury recovery- I love you, but I don’t care how frustrated you are. Injury recovery needs easy to moderate and TONS of support and rest.
• New disciplines think of the injuries that come every year from people deciding to run every day when they’ve never jogged before
• Creative process - yep, support, space and ease are going to pay off way more
• Anything involving food or body composition
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Things that could be a good fit good for hard mode:

• The final push for an act
• Goal specific programming (like strength training)
• Soft skills like applying for work
• Prep for a specific event like an audition or special show (note, not all gigs are special, trust me)

So..

• What difficulty mode do you want for your next goal(s)?
• What does that look like?
• What does that experience feel like?
• Is that what you want?
  (and a secret fianl question…what does your support system look like to get you there?)

The fine print:

• Plans are best made in pencil, you can ALWAY change the difficulty setting if it’s not getting you what you want or not working.
• In general, I recommend trying easy or balanced first, hard mode is a specific tool, for specific things.
• Hard mode does not mean you don’t have support, in fact doing hard mode well will require MORE of everything, including support.

Got feelings, thoughts, questions?

I would love to hear them, so as always, feel free to hit reply and share

Happy New Year!

Sido
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