It was New Year’s eve (31^st Dec, 2023). We were a bunch of friends with our families, who had come together to welcome the new year. We were all in the age bracket of 40-50, who had been neighbours for several years and were part of a running group prior to Covid. Amongst usual banter over good food and drinks, there were random discussions about travel plans, jobs, kids and what not. After a bit, the topic veered to health. My friend Tirthankar Patnaik, whom I call the GOAT (God of all things), for his deep knowledge across a very wide range of topics suddenly brought in the concept of “75 hard” and explained it in detail[1]. Clearly, a new year’s fun party is not the best place to discuss this topic, but Tirth has superior speaking skills and commands an awe in most audiences. Also, this was a topic which was of concern to us, so we all listened as he guided us through the nuances of this.

The standard 75 hard challenge has strict rules on following a diet, working out twice a day for 45 mins each, drinking a gallon of water, reading ten pages and clicking photos daily to keep yourself motivated. The tough part was that if you missed anything any day, you had to restart from day zero. We agreed to tweak it a bit individually. A whatsapp group was immediately created so that we could all highlight our tweaks and report daily – guess this is one genuine use case of whatsapp!

What I agreed to was:

1. Drinking 3 litres of water every day
2. No added sugar in anything , no alcohol (that is an easy one as I am a teetotaller)
3. Weekly average of 90 mins workout per day – with or without breaks, indoors or outdoors
4. 20 mins of newspaper reading daily
5. Pic only at the beginning and end of successful period.

I defined exceptions as any medication which may have sugar/ alcohol, ignorant/genuine error and travel days.

This challenge started from 1^st of January, 2024 for me. Now, New Year is a great time to start this given the “josh” and yet, the most difficult in more ways than one. As is true of all new journeys, this was not without its share of challenges- and there was a reason why this was called “Hard”! As I have written earlier, Paulo Coelho in his much quoted lines from “The Alchemist” says “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”  This is only half the truth- the good side of the story. Before conspiring to help you achieve anything, the universe conspires to test you on how badly you want it.

Folks at office got sweets and cakes to mark the festive season (including a special Christmas mince pie) and I had to politely say no. I had to say no to “rusk”, which my favorite chai store offers for free. Interestingly we hosted a party, had a decent dessert spread- but I could not try them. And then I attended a big fat Marwari wedding in a luxurious five star hotel with an amazing spread- and yet one had to resist those temptations. In my professional capacity, December and January see lavish parties being thrown by my clients who are ultra-rich institutions. I attended all of them, and had to learn to ignore the sweets counter totally.

In a month’s time, I had settled to the new normal- and avoiding sweets had become easier. The mind had been tamed to ignore their existence. But our brain does come up with its ways to beat our plans. I found myself snacking more albeit on savouries- as sort of a compensation. I had to become more conscious about this so that this compensation does not take away the good work! The feeling of self-depravation also added a genuine question- where does one draw a balance between austerity/ giving up and still remaining human enough to enjoy some pleasures. Innocuous and yet profound as it may sound, I guess this does merit further thought and discussion albeit at some other point.

As a quick background, I had been obese most of my life due to a medicine reaction as a kid. However, somewhere around 2014, I had started my fitness journey and started running, yoga and exercises. The exercise part of the challenge was not that difficult as one hour daily was inbuilt in my schedule. However, to take it to 1.5 hours meant pushing myself. While this was not as tough on the body, the time management part was tricky. I started with a 45 mins knee and back workout in the evening. It needed some push to find the energy to do this post work, especially as I had gotten up early in the morning and completed one intense workout session. For most weeks, my average was higher and tended towards 2 hours per day as besides the daily workouts, on Sundays, I had long runs with stretching sessions before and after.

We would keep posting updates about our journeys in the whatsapp group and that helped and motivated each other. Not only would we write about our successes, we would write about our challenges and failures as well. Each of us supported, cheered and guided others and received similar response from others. Although we were all working individually towards our goals, there was camaraderie and a “team on mission” feeling.

About midway into this challenge, I thought deeper on how it was affecting my behaviour. I realised that at the outset, it increased my awareness of what I was doing in a certain context (eating, drinking), and made me realise that I have a choice. More importantly, it was pushing me to exercise the choice judiciously, rather than unconsciously. Over a period of time, this conscious choice making was disciplining my mind to make the right choice again and again. An interesting realisation also was that once we have done this for a while in any context, we can broaden the context in a manner that we come closer to our life goals- and that is where the power of these challenges and experiences lie.

I was able to successfully complete the challenge without any breaks or having to start all over again. I felt better physically (though there was no weight loss!), and stronger mentally.

The key learnings for me from this challenge were:

1. Hard things are not that hard if you decide to challenge yourself into doing them!
2. We almost always have a choice, even if it is a difficult one- and more often than not, we do not realise this.
3. My awareness about my behaviour increased to a different level. I realised that I indulge in emotional eating, which I need to give up.
4. Trying some of these challenges can really help in opening one up to newer ideas and possibilities, and that in itself is a victory. Some of my friends who did not succeed in the mission, also felt this gain.
5. If we succeed in the initial goal, it helps us gain tremendous confidence and motivates us to take more challenging things.
6. If you manage to align family and friends, it can make the journey much easier. My friends seeded the idea and our whatsapp group was both a guide and conscience keeper. My son would read the labels of all food items at home and strictly tell me that I could not have so and so, if he found added sugar in any of them. My wife ensured that she did not prepare or get any desserts, sweets etc, or only get sugarfree items and that too sparingly.

In recent years, there has been a lot of talk in coaching circles on doing hard things. Thanks to social media, many of these ideas have caught fancy – like a 4 am ice bath.  Personally, I am not such a fan of ice baths or any radical challenges. Nonetheless, there is a “statement value” to them and an ability to promote self on social media-so if you like them and it inspires you, go for it by all means! Having said that, I do think it is a great idea to do things which are seemingly harder for us. It does not have to be anything too complicated. It could start with one discipline which we want to achieve, but have not been able to do consistently for some reason-say, waking up at 6.00 am or earlier, walking at least 30 mins daily, keeping the phone off or away for at least one hour a day, being fully present in a conversation with your spouse every day. After a month of discipline and hopefully success, we can move to the next thing. Over a period of time, we will find that we have moved up meaningfully both in our ability to discipline our mind and take up newer challenges.

Various studies on the brain and particularly Neuro Linguistic programming NLP teach us about neuroplasticity. Simply put, Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change and adapt to its environment. When we do new things or do things differently, new neural pathways form in response to new experiences. This is not a linear addition to our brain capacity- it is exponential in nature. So doing hard things/ new things can be a game changer over a period of time. Studies have also shown learning new things as a proactive counter to dementia and age related learning disabilities.

So what is the hard thing which you will do next?

Additional reading

https://andyfrisella.com/pages/75hard-info?srsltid=AfmBOoqzrhHbfCGP76O1Xwon72hdc2BDtNe2ggYQ1VJX8sChn1W7Qkr0

---