Pink elephants

A few precious words that came to me today about hard work:

Limiting Beliefs For Entrepreneurs #27: You believe a business is more respectable because it’s perceived by society to be harder. I think this comes from education system PTSD. In school (and in corpo too), you get all these kudos and extra credit for how hard it LOOKS like you’re working. But in business, you get ZERO extra points for difficulty and how many hours you put in. Example: The guy who owns 3 local restaurants works generally the same amount of hours per week as Elon Musk, yet one of them is substantially richer. I had this limiting belief for years. Once I finally let go, I upgraded my character. – thepatwalls

“Work hard on what comes easily” – James Clear

I keep saying indie hacking and entrepreneurship is hard af.

But is it really? Or do I just want/expect things to be hard?

Or is that presumedly harmless self-talk actually harmful, and end up unconsciously setting the wrong kind of expectations for myself, in some kind of vicious loop?

Like what @haideralmosawi talked about in his post about healing not always being a lifelong process.

You can’t get more than what you expect.
Your expectations sets a ceiling, or a low bar.
You manifest what you believe will happen.

Sometimes it’s good to look in the mirror, have a reality check, be realistic and objective, open and vulnerable, and talk about challenges and blocks. Talking, sharing, venting, can be cathartic and helpful.

It’s another to be talking in a way that actively reinforces what you do not want. Like saying “Do not think of a pink elephant”.

Am I manifesting a pink elephant here when I say indie hacking is hard? Or am I just venting, then moving along, fighting on?

I might have started on the latter, but lately it seems to be more of the former. The past few years had not been kind. Maybe the scarcity mindset is getting entrenched. Not good.

Maybe time to talk different. And by way of my words, think different.

Maybe it’s time to work hard on what comes easy, to me.