Difficult Difficult and Difficult Easy

I just read an interesting article about the idea of Difficult Difficult and Difficult Easy.  Difficult Difficult is doing things that are challenging, new, scary and sometime (or most times) not very fun but come with the promise of personal growth and increasing your life skills.

Difficult Easy are all those challenging activities that grind on you, wear you down, and don't teach you new skills or help you grow.

Dieting is Difficult Easy.  Sure, it's hard and you can slug it out -- but unless you change your eating behaviors, you will gain the weight back because you haven't changed the habits that caused your weight gain in the first place.  There is no growth of skill even though you put in all that work.

Mindful Eating is Difficult Difficult.  It's hard remembering to think about your hunger/fullness levels BEFORE you start to eat.  It is difficult to act on hunger/fullness information when it goes against the grain of your usual eating habits.  Sometimes you are going to want to give up on the behavior change all together.  But....

Mindful Eating is inherently an opportunity for personal growth and the learning of new skills.  Difficult Difficult but also the most rewarding.  Or as the author writes:

....And don’t, please (like my old mate) fall into the trap of mistaking hard work – even extremely hard (easy) work – for progress. Because, let’s be frank, difficult easy is really just another way of saying ‘easy’, and there is no growth in easy.....