Abhirami Pillai

It’s Thursday. I’ve been at this laptop since 8am — writing code for work in the morning, debugging something I didn’t expect to break, then switching to personal research in the evening, trying to understand how evals work in AI systems. Now it’s night and instead of stopping I’m writing this essay. If you asked me to stay up eight more hours to build something, I would do it without a second thought. No negotiation, no alarm going off in my head saying this is too much. Just the next problem, and the next.

But ask me to go to the gym? It’s almost four months into the new year. My gym clothes are washed, folded, sitting exactly where I left them in January. My shoes are by the door. Every few weeks a friend asks and I tell them the same thing — soon, I’ll come soon. I believe it when I say it. And then I open my laptop every morning without any struggles.

I’ve spent a long time wondering why. Why is it so easy for me to sit and learn, build, read for hours — but no matter how many forces point me toward the gym, I simply can’t move?

My dad used to ask me to come jogging every morning when I was back home in India. I would sleep right through it. Tomorrow, I’d say. That was years ago and the echo of that tomorrow is somehow still here.Meanwhile, some of my closest friends go to the gym like it’s second nature. They don’t negotiate with themselves about it. But sit them in front of a laptop for nine hours straight? They’d last two.
So what is this? Genetics? Habit formed early? Or something so obvious we keep looking past it?

I think you have a thing too.

Not a goal. Not a dream. A thing that sits in the back of your head, that you’ve explained away a hundred times, that you’ve told yourself you’ll start on Monday, on January 1st, after this project, after things calm down.

Maybe it’s the people pleasing I can’t stop even when it’s destroying me. Going from someone who never says no to someone who finally can — I’m still figuring that out. The control freak in me that exhausts everyone around me, including myself. The accountability I struggled with for years — to myself, to the people I love. Being a good friend, consistently, even when life gets busy. Not procrastinating. Doing things alone even when nobody is coming with me. Letting go of things I cannot control. The anxiety that shows up uninvited. Learning to trust and be trusted. Putting the phone down. Cooking a simple meal instead of opening DoorDash because I am bored and tired.

And some things are still hard. Writing clean Python functions without second guessing every line. Going to the gym, obviously. Having patience for people when I have none left. Getting out of the house more. Ordering food not because I’m hungry but because it fills something else.

These are mine. Laid out flat. Some of them I’ve moved through, slowly, messily. Some of them I’m still standing in front of.

And maybe for you it’s the anger you can’t control no matter how hard you try. Being more assertive at work. Dropping the negative thoughts instead of feeding them for hours. Talking to someone you’re attracted to without freezing up. Applying for the job that feels too big for you. Learning that language you’ve been “about to start” for three years. Living alone for the first time. Building that startup that lives permanently in your notes app. Moving to a new country with nothing but a plan that might not work.

You know exactly what it is. You’ve always known.
And yet here we both are.

Here’s what I think is actually happening.

My friends didn’t decide to love the gym. Nobody sat them down and gave them a motivational speech. They just… did it. Repeatedly. Before it ever occurred to them that it could be hard. And somewhere in that repetition, without noticing, it became who they are.It wasn’t one big moment. It was a hundred small ones. A parent who took them along. A team they were part of. A neighborhood where everyone just did it. Iteration before resistance had a chance to form.

And when it got hard — because it did get hard, for everyone — they had something real around them. Not a motivational quote. Not a thirty second reel of someone’s highlight life. Not a podcast telling them to wake up at 5am and fix their mindset. An actual person. Someone who showed up, who knew their name, who noticed when they didn’t.

That’s the thing nobody wants to say out loud because it’s inconvenient: the people who do hard things easily were mostly just placed in the right environment early enough that it stopped feeling hard. They didn’t find discipline. Discipline found them first.

And me? I didn’t choose to love the laptop either. Nobody placed me there with a system or a plan. I just did it, and nobody around me ever made me feel bad for it. No one called me a nerd. No one pulled me away. The environment was quietly, invisibly safe. And so it became me.

Which leaves both of us with a real question — what do you do when you’re already an adult and nobody placed you there?

As adults trying to change, we are fighting uphill in a way that some of our friends never had to. They never needed a reason to go to the gym. We will need a very good one. Not inspiration — inspiration is gone by Wednesday. A real reason. The kind that stays with you when it’s cold outside and the couch is warm.

And then after the reason, we need the environment. Not apps. Not podcasts. Not a thirty second reel of someone else’s transformation. An actual friend who shows up at your door. A therapist who sits with you in the discomfort instead of helping you think your way out of it. A community where your hard thing is just what people do on Saturdays. A life arranged so that avoiding it is harder than doing it. We are essentially building in adulthood what others got for free in childhood. It’s harder. It’s slower. But it’s not impossible.

Nobody is coming to save us from our hard thing. Not the right book, not the right podcast, not the right Monday morning. I have been waiting for a version of myself that is already ready, already disciplined, already fearless. That person is not showing up. She was never going to.

Here is the truth that nobody in your feed will tell you because it doesn’t get likes: the people who do hard things are not built differently. They were just placed differently. Earlier. And now it’s our turn to place ourselves.

Find your reason. Not the inspirational kind — the kind that makes you angry enough, hungry enough, tired enough of being the person who keeps saying soon. Then find one real human being who will stand next to you while you do it. Not a coach. Not a content creator. A person who knows your name and will notice if you disappear.

Then do the thing badly. Do it slowly. Do it while you’re scared and unprepared and convinced you look ridiculous. Because the only way your hard thing becomes invisible — the only way it becomes second nature like it is for the people you’ve been watching — is through repetition you haven’t done yet.

I haven’t gone to the gym yet. My shoes are still by the door. But I understand now why they’ve been there, and that feels like something. Maybe that’s where it starts — not with action, but with honesty.

You have figured out hard things before. There are things in your life right now that feel effortless, that someone else is watching from a distance thinking I could never do that. We both already know how this works.

Your hard thing is not a wall. It’s a door.

We just have to stop walking past it.