Why doing hard things quietly changes everything
I finished the Comrades Marathon in South Africa. It’s not a symbolic run or a bucket-list adventure. It’s a test. Nearly 90 kilometers of unrelenting elevation, sharp gradients, long segments with no shade, and no real chance to find rhythm. Your legs never get a break. Your mind doesn’t either.
It took me 11 hours and 20 minutes to finish. Long enough to feel every doubt, every ache, every reason to stop. But finishing was only part of the story. The real change started after I crossed the line. Because doing something that difficult, voluntarily, quietly reshaped how I think, work, and make decisions.
Not dramatically. Not loudly. But meaningfully.
The Pressure to Perform - and the Freedom to Release It
The hardest part of the race was the beginning. I was aiming for a sub-11-hour finish to earn a bronze medal. But I wasn’t doing it for myself. It was performative. I had created a silent narrative that if I didn’t reach that goal, I had failed.
This is not uncommon in high performers. We often create external metrics - titles, times, scores, milestones - as proof of success, even when no one is asking for them. These goals aren’t always unhealthy. But when they are driven by ego or comparison rather than alignment, they create unnecessary pressure and reduce resilience.
What happened around kilometer 35 wasn’t a breakdown. It was a reset. I recalibrated my expectations, decided to enjoy the experience, and kept going with greater presence. That small mental shift not only salvaged the race, it taught me something more permanent.
We perform better when we shift from ego-driven striving to internally-aligned engagement. This aligns with self-determination theory, which shows that intrinsic motivation, doing something because it’s meaningful or satisfying, leads to greater persistence, deeper learning, and more adaptive responses to challenge (Ryan & Deci, 2000 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2000-13324-007).
Mental Endurance Isn’t Built in Silence, It’s Built in Struggle
Most people assume endurance is primarily physical. But scientific evidence consistently shows that mental fatigue plays an equally important, if not larger, role in performance.
In a 2009 study, Marcora and colleagues demonstrated that mental fatigue significantly impairs physical endurance performance. Participants exposed to cognitively demanding tasks before exercise reached exhaustion earlier and reported higher perceived effort. Their bodies were still capable, but their minds had lost tolerance for discomfort (Marcora et al., 2009).
This is where doing hard things, especially those outside your usual domain, builds real adaptation. It forces the nervous system to confront and reframe signals of fatigue, stress, and uncertainty. And with repetition, this increases tolerance. It builds what psychologists call “distress tolerance” - the ability to experience difficult emotions without becoming overwhelmed.
This principle is not limited to sport. We see it in clinical settings, entrepreneurship, leadership, and even parenting. In each case, the individual learns to co-exist with discomfort rather than avoid it. This is a core pillar of resilience.
Post-Event Adaptation and Reframing Capacity
Finishing Comrades didn’t give me a boost of confidence in the motivational sense. It gave me something more practical: clarity. Since returning home, the projects I had been avoiding (starting a podcast, designing a data portal, making long-term personal decisions) don’t feel as big anymore.
This is something I see clinically as well. After difficult but meaningful life events - intensive therapy, athletic achievements, hard conversations - patients often display more cognitive flexibility. They are more willing to engage with tasks they previously avoided. This is known as “reframing capacity,” the ability to view previously threatening or ambiguous tasks through a new lens.
Exposure to challenge, when coupled with reflection and integration, leads to increased cognitive reappraisal ability. In simpler terms, hard things create new mental maps. You’ve seen yourself persist. You’ve seen yourself adapt. That memory becomes a reference point for everything else.
Allostatic Load and the Value of Contrast
Not all stress is bad. Chronic, unrelenting stress without recovery leads to dysfunction. But acute, purposeful stress creates adaptation. This concept is central to the theory of allostasis.
Allostatic load refers to the cumulative burden placed on the body and brain by repeated or chronic stress. However, stress exposure followed by proper recovery allows for “hormesis”, a process where a small amount of stress makes the organism more resilient.
Exercise, fasting, cold exposure, and even high-stakes conversations can all be hormetic stressors, if framed and recovered from correctly. They expand your window of stress tolerance, allowing you to operate at higher levels with lower perceived effort. The result is not just better performance, but more bandwidth. More margin. More room to think clearly under pressure.
Identity Shifts Through Experience
There’s one more layer worth mentioning: identity.
Doing something hard - truly hard, not just inconvenient - changes how you see yourself. Not in an abstract or spiritual way, but in a neurological and behavioral one.
When we complete a difficult task that contradicts our previous self-image, our brain updates that image. This is called “self-signaling.” The act of persistence becomes evidence. “I am the kind of person who can handle this.” That identity shift influences every future decision, often without conscious awareness.
Daniel Kahneman’s work on the “experiencing self” versus the “remembering self” illustrates this well. The brain doesn’t remember every moment equally. It remembers how something ended, what it meant, and how we narrate it. Difficult experiences - when ended with a sense of purpose or pride - are remembered positively and become foundations for future behavior.
Conclusion: The Quiet Power of Showing Up
I didn’t have an emotional breakdown at the finish line. I didn’t cry, collapse, or kiss the ground. I was content. Quietly proud. Calm.
That’s the power of doing hard things. Not the drama, not the applause. The shift in how you relate to your own limits. The ability to take on projects that once seemed too big. The courage to move forward when outcomes are unclear. The readiness to sit with uncertainty without rushing to escape it.
So here’s the real question: