When you're ready, you won't have to

One must imagine Odysseus yawning.

What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?

No Neo. I’m trying to tell you that when you’re ready, you won’t have to.

— The Matrix (1999)

We all have that thing that we’ve been chasing.

We think to ourselves: “I’ll keep putting in the hard work, the discipline, the hustle and I’ll finally get there!”

And so we use that as a free license to strain, exert, and coerce ourselves into a persistent persona of performance.

But what if it didn’t need to be that way?

What if you could just show up every day, with boundless calm, maybe even a slight yawn. Poised, prepared, and at total ease.

What if I told you it could be easy… boring even?

Society feeds us epic stories of heroes embarking on great adventures, slaying impossible demons, and negotiating unfathomable odds. Our impressionable minds become biased to this way as the only way. Not only do we begin to expect these types of stories, we even start to demand them of our heroes. We love to see old Nike ads of Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant glorifying their late nights and early practices, reality be damned. We want the story. We want to be assured that they struggled, that their success was justified with pain, suffering, and hardship as if these things had to balance out on an accounting ledger.

But what if this whole premise is wrong, the stuff of myths and marketing?

What if the path is actually ridiculously easy, as long as you show up every day willing to do the easy work?

One must imagine Odysseus yawning.