Doing Hard Things Quotes

“Children run away from problems. Children hide. I didn't want to remain a child. I couldn't help but think back to when Olive had rescued me...I could see now that she'd saved me in 1941 precisely because she had known that I was still a child. She could tell that I was not yet someone who was accountable for her own actions...Olive had seen me for what I was - an immature and unformed girl, who could not yet be expected to stand in the painful field of honor. I had needed a wise and caring adult to save me, and Olive had been that champion. She had stood in the field of honor on my behalf. But I had been young then. I wasn't young anymore. I would have to do this myself. But what would an adult - a formed person, a person of honor - do in this circumstance? Face the music, I suppose. Fight her own corner...Forgive somebody perhaps. But how?...British army engineers during the Great War, who used to say: We can do it, whether it can be done or not. Eventually, all of us will be called upon to do the thing that cannot be done. That is the painful field...”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, City of Girls

“Friends would hear our plans and say, ‘Oh, we tried camping ten years ago. It was pouring ran, we got soaked, and we’ve never gone back. It was a disaster.’ We felt like they were asking the wrong question; they’d based their evaluation on whether or not the weekend was comfortable. From that perspective, the poor weather and planning certainly made it a disaster. But if they were to instead ask themselves, Was this weekend a moment in our best story? Then the fact that they were still talking about the experience ten years later indicated that it had the type of disruptive potential that all good stories are made of.”
― Ben Crawford, 2,000 Miles Together: The Story of the Largest Family to Hike the Appalachian Trail