The easy road. That was their proposal to me when you boil it down.
A small (relatively) one-time fee, and with it my face will be on the cover of a magazine that’s distributed all over the world. It’ll say I’m one of those entrepreneurs to look out for and to take notes on. I’ll be glazed up like I’m the next big shot industry leader who will shake up the entire industry.
And with their millions of readers and subscribers from these magazines, success, fame, and wealth will naturally gravitate towards me just by sheer numbers alone.
Everything will just be so much easier.
Or will it?
Ever since I started publishing for Brainz Magazine, I’ve gotten a handful of offers like that. From their pitches alone they sound like a writer’s dream come true. And yet, I refuse to indulge in these kinds of offers.
My reason is simple: it’s an easy road, and it’s far more costly than if I worked at my own pace and determined my own path. And while my life is made easier, it’ll also become much harder in ways I might not be expecting. Here is why.
You Betray Your Own Values
I take a point of pride in being weird and different from other gurus for a wide variety of reasons. It’s not because my methods or ideas are superior to other gurus—after all, I did pay to be a contributor. Rather, our values and our identity are far more important than we realize.
There is no denying that if we venture into something new or try something new out, we change. Developing new habits requires thinking in a way we never thought before. Picking up other skills that make the habit easier to perform means learning new things and changing our perspective. We also encounter new people that impact our lives in different ways.
These things can shift and influence our own values and sense of morality.
There’s nothing wrong with changing or shifting our values as we learn and grow; in fact, it’s healthy to determine what those are and to test them. However, taking the easy path often encourages us to not think about those details. Deep down it demands that you remove your sense of agency and self to pursue something under the guise that it would be helpful to you.
And while it can be helpful to you, you can end up being less of yourself. Worse, you become someone you don’t want to be.
You Feel Less Satisfied
I have no doubt in my mind that taking the easy road to success feels great at the start. The sense of satisfaction from achieving a goal is a rush of an experience. The additional perks from being in that higher echelon are an added bonus. But what isn’t brought up in self-help enough is the context and nuance surrounding improvements we see in our lives.
For sure, we wouldn’t be in the positions we are in if it weren’t for the people working and contributing directly and indirectly to get us to this point. This fact alone makes it natural for us to lean on others, especially ones who claim they can dramatically improve our lives.
Even if it were true and were possible, the outcome wouldn’t be great.
Because for convenience, we throw away our sense of control over the direction our lives will lead. We effectively become chained down to both the advantages and the drawbacks that these bring. Sometimes those drawbacks aren’t as bad, but pushed to the extreme, they can become detrimental. That sense of satisfaction leaves a bad aftertaste.
A good example of this is winning the lottery. While on the surface this seems great, lottery winners and studies disagree, as many winners end up bankrupt. And if you say you’d be responsible with your money, well, it might not be as satisfying as earning it yourself.
At the end of the day, people offering the easy road are asking you to give them control. It seems innocent enough, but when you have an industry like self-help, it’s easier to be misled. And if you somehow are able to make it work and achieve what they promised, you might not feel as great once the dust is settled.
The Easy Road Denies You Joy
Choosing not to listen is easy. Being hateful to trans people, people of colour, and other minority groups is easy. Using AI to make art or videos is easier. Without a doubt, conveniences and methods that can speed up the process of something and give us shortcuts are compelling. But these hidden costs do add up over time.
Giving up your sense of self denies your identity and overall direction in life. Relying on convenient tools to do the thinking and work for you makes you no different from other people. It lacks your personal touch and quirks. And pushed to the extreme, it can lead you to feeling stuck.
Relaying on your base instincts and reacting to your initial impulses is easier, but it denies you the opportunity to be a better person and form a genuine connection. It denies you the opportunity to learn and appreciate a different culture, a different viewpoint, or a different way of life.
At our core, we seek connection to other people, and we also wish for a sense of purpose. When we work towards a purpose and are surrounded by people we genuinely care about, we experience joy, satisfaction, and excitement.
Sure, trying is tough. Sure, we’re going to make mistakes and face countless challenges in pursuit of what we believe in. But taking the easy road feels like a betrayal of not only the journey we set ourselves on but also the end results. That sense of joy and pride for using our brains to create art. That sense of connecting with someone that’s going down a path that we can’t relate to at all or is from a whole different culture or ethnicity than ours.
By taking the easy road, we offer ourselves convenience, but it’s only temporary. And with each subsequent use of the easy road, we become less and less of who we want to be and void of any joy.
The Easy Road Isn’t The Path
Should our lives be easier these days compared to older generations? Yes. Do we need to suffer, struggle, and hustle our asses off to build character and achieve everything in life? No. Like with everything, context and nuance matter. If everything were too easy or super simple, everyone would be doing it and it would be boring. Alternatively, if everything required a tremendous amount of resources and effort from us, most people would give up and try something else.
The problem with the easy road is that it’s often serving as a convenience to something that’s both challenging and engaging from the very beginning. Making it as a writer, building an audience, coaching and guiding people, losing weight, or being in a functioning relationship. These are things we can all achieve over time if we’re willing to try. For some of us this could take a handful of months, while others could take years or even a decade or two. But trying to speed up those things is often not worth it, for it clearly creates more problems than solutions.
And worst of all, you end up paying the price for being tempted and following that path.