Permanent Mental Toughness and Discipline
Live Hard has been completely life changing for me. If a friend wouldn’t have asked me to do 75 Hard back in February 2021, I don’t know where I would be today. I know I wouldn’t be as healthy or disciplined as I am right now.
Some people choose to complete 75 Hard, while others complete the whole Live Hard year. I am currently in my second Live Hard year. I started Phase 3 on July 16th. In my opinion, you need to complete Live Hard once in your lifetime.
I truly believe if the program is done correctly and without compromise, it will stick with you for life. You might not check boxes from a list everyday, but mental toughness and discipline can certainly become a permanent part of your life.
Many days I’ll still spend some amount of time outside walking. It might not be exactly 45 mins long with 3 hours until the next workout, but it’s being done. I still enjoy reading nonfiction books. It’s amazing the knowledge you can learn from ten pages a day. The hardest for me to do consistently is the gallon of water. I still drink a lot of water, but it’s not a gallon everyday. During Phase 1 and 3 of the program you always complete 30 straight days of 5 minute cold showers. That is hard for me to stick with when I am not doing the program. There are so many benefits to a cold shower though that I never knew about.
The last time I started Phase 3, I was terrified of talking to a stranger everyday. I am a very outgoing person, but the idea of having to start a conversation with someone everyday for 30 days straight in the cold month of January AND right after COVID was scary. Fast forward to over a year later and not many days go by that I don’t carry a conversation with someone I never talked to before.
During the winter of 2022/23 I was diagnosed with some health issues that required me to completely change my diet and some of my lifestyle. WIthout the discipline of 75 Hard, I know it would have been a much tougher change for me and one maybe I wouldn't have been able to stick with long term. I sometimes see on social media saying how 75 Hard is just a quick fix and it is impossible to maintain the habits for life, but I completely disagree. I have been able to maintain the 75 Hard lifestyle over the last 2.5 years while continuing to put my health first. I needed the mental toughness that I earned from completing Live Hard to be able to handle the issues that were coming my way. If you are completing the 75 days and then planning a huge celebration and going back to your “usual” way of life, you are completely missing the entire point of the program to begin with. I had to change my mind before my body was ever going to change.
