Emily McDonald took the stairs instead of the elevator her first year of college, even with a heavy backpack. She argues that choosing the harder option in small, low-stakes moments trains your brain for bigger decisions like launching a business or asking someone out.
Practice choosing the difficult thing. When I first went to undergrad, my first year I lived in a dorm and I was on the 4th floor. I remember making a promise to myself when I moved in. I said, I'm gonna take the stairs every single time. Didn't matter if I was wearing a heavy backpack with my water bottle, didn't matter. I took the stairs every single time. 4 flights of stairs. Now that's not a ton, 4 flights, but it was really the practice of choosing the slightly more difficult thing. 'Cause yeah, I could have taken the elevator every time, But I didn't. I wanted to take the stairs. The practice of every single time choosing to do the slightly more difficult thing, it familiarized my brain with doing the more difficult thing. This doesn't mean that you have to friction max your entire life and always make your life more difficult. That is not at all what I'm saying. But making it a habit of choosing the slightly more difficult thing where you can actually starts to rewire your identity. And so give yourself the opportunity to practice that. On low stakes circumstances so that when the higher stakes circumstances come along, like building your business or building a platform or going and asking somebody out or going on a date, you choose the more difficult thing in those situations when it actually matters.
