Choosing Your Hard: A Lesson in Voluntary Hardship
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This picture is a typical example of the types of pictures my best friend Sammy and I send to each other on the regular. We like to start our days the same…as flipping comfy and cozy as a person can be. And we like to share that with each other.
And yes that is a sweater on my coffee cup. Because coffee can get even cozier.
This is to say: I am a hygge-loving thoroughbred comfort seeker. Most likely a cat in another life. My mom used to tell me I could sell sleep. So when I started researching more on this topic of voluntary hardship, I truly thought,
“ I cannot relate to this shit at all.”
However, the more I read about it, the more I realized that I live with someone who regularly chooses to do these acts of voluntary hardship on a regular basis without any outside prompting whatsoever.
For what? For the sheer pleasure of challenging himself.
What a strange beautiful man.
There have been too many early mornings to count where I lay snug in our dark room, cozy in my bed with all the covers imaginable and pillows galore…
…and I am awakened to a full grown man hooping and hollering in the shower….
…because he CHOSE to turn the shower to cold at 5am….
…Because in his opinion, it’s good for him…
As I said before, something I cannot relate to whatsoever. *Although as a side note, I am sitting outside the YMCA right now finishing this article, its 45 degrees and my fingers aren’t working properly because they’re frozen. Does that count? #californiagirlnow
But come to find out, there are tons of actual benefits to the acts of choosing hardship for yourself.
Maybe this strange, beautiful man of mine is actually quite on to something!
What is voluntary hardship?
Voluntary hardship is basically choosing to add something “hard” or challenging to your delightfully cushy life for the sake of challenging yourself, developing character, and increasing resilience.
A few examples of voluntary hardship are:
- Taking cold showers
- Intermittent fasting
- Riding your bike to work
- Sleeping on your floor for a night instead of in your cozy ass bed
- Doing a digital detox for an entire day
- Doing a financial detox where you don’t buy anything new for a period of time
- Running barefoot
- Going without power for 4 hours once a week
Why the heck would you do that? Benefits of voluntary hardship
As much as I get a kick out of my sweet hubby whooping it up in the shower at 5am for something he chose to do to himself, there are actually tons of benefits that take place when we choose temporary hardship.
- Improve your gratitude for the basics in your life (electricity, food, warmth, etc)
- Reset your perspective on what is actually “hard”
- Help you to flex and strengthen your willpower muscles
- Increases resilience
- Help you save more money
- Help you re evaluate priorities
- Reset happiness set point (more on this below!)
Hedonic Adaptation
What is hedonic adaptation? You may have also heard it referred to as the Hedonic Treadmill…
Basically it means we’ll never be more happy than we are now…
…I’m kidding…sort of.
Hedonic adaptation is “is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.”
St. Augustine once said in Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy,
“A true saying it is, Desire hath no rest, is infinite in itself, endless, and as one calls it, a perpetual rack, or horse-mill.”
So yeah, like I said…basically we can never be happier…
But is there a way we can change our set point? Yes, through voluntary hardship.
Remember, by “choosing hard” we:
- learn more gratitude for the most basic gifts that are all around us,
- we reset our perspective on what is actually “hard”,
- and it can increase resilience…
…all the while lowering our happiness set point so that it takes less to make us happy.
Let’s talk money
Now it is highly unlikely that this former cat is going to start:
- taking cold showers (I ended up coming around to cold showers
after all, read about my 30-day challenge here) - I get dizzy as shit by lunch if I don’t eat breakfast (probably all the more reason I should try intermittent fasting when I’m not pregnant),
- and I have no desire to sleep on the floor when I am utterly obsessed with my bed and sometimes even tell it so…
But there are other ways to volunteer hardship into your life that don’t involve those particular creature comforts.
For instance, let’s talk money.
Seneca the Younger was arguably one of the richest men in Roman empire. In his Moral Letters to Lucilius/Letter 18 he brilliantly states,
“Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?” (…) Let the pallet be a real one, and the coarse cloak; let the bread be hard and grimy. Endure all this for three or four days at a time, sometimes for more, so that it may be a test of yourself instead of a mere hobby. Then, I assure you, my dear Lucilius, you will leap for joy when filled with a pennyworth of food, and you will understand that a man’s peace of mind does not depend upon Fortune; for, even when angry she grants enough for our needs.”
Seneca purposely chose to practice voluntary poverty as a way to not get too attached to his level of wealth! Brilliant, yeah?
So what do you say, do you want to voluntarily detox your spending with me?
30 day “spending detox”
I have decided that in the month of January I am going to run a challenge in which I invite my readers to join me on a 30 day spending detox.
The holidays can be a time of making money rain, and January can leave you feeling hungover and dizzy. For some that is literal, for others I’m talking about spending here…
Now if you see 30 days and you’re already thinking, “uh no, this chick be crazy… maybe I’ll start with a weekend…” that’s great! You do not need to participate in the entire 30 day challenge to get some amazing benefits from this.
You could choose:
- A weekend
- 2 weeks
- Or the full 30 day challenge
If you are interested in riding this crazy train with me in January, enter your name and email below and leading up to January, you will begin to receive emails with challenge guidelines and loads of encouragement and tips throughout the 30 days.
When I did a spending detox a few years ago, I literally saved over $800 that month just from cutting out unnecessary expenditures that were more “wants” than “needs”.
Wouldn’t that be nice after a few months of financial gluttony?
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me at jenny600@gmail.com or message me on Instagram or Facebook!
