The point (…) isn’t to imagine a parallel universe in which things were easy, but to raise the possibility that they might in fact be easy, here and now.

(…) the irony of what’s going on here is that this prospect – that something meaningful might prove easier than you imagined – can itself be a source of discomfort. Many of us were apparently raised to believe not just that important things can feel difficult (they can!) but that they must feel difficult; that the measure of accomplishment is how much effort it took. And, moreover, that effort is a measure of self-worth — that if an achievement comes easily to you, you must somehow be cheating, or that you just got lucky.

It feels somehow illicit to consider the alternative: that you might already have all it takes (…)

Oliver Burkeman