“I can do hard things.”

It’s a phrase that has become increasingly popular in recent years, and for good reason. For many people, it has served as a reminder that they are stronger than they realize. It encourages resilience, perseverance, and the willingness to face adversity rather than avoid it. As a psychologist, I appreciate that message. Learning to tolerate discomfort and overcome challenges is an important part of emotional health.

At the same time, I’ve begun to wonder if we’ve unintentionally left out an equally important lesson.

Just because you can do hard things doesn’t mean you have to.

Somewhere along the way, many of us have started equating difficulty with virtue. We admire the hustle, celebrate being busy, and wear exhaustion like a badge of honor. We often assume that if something is difficult, it must also be worthwhile. Yet those two ideas are not the same.

In my work, I’ve seen people grow tremendously by embracing difficult challenges. I’ve also seen people become anxious, burned out, and disconnected because they never learned that it was okay to say “no.” There are hardships that strengthen us, and there are hardships that simply drain us. The challenge is learning the difference.

This is one of the reasons I find Logotherapy so compelling. Viktor Frankl never glorified suffering for its own sake. In fact, he believed that if suffering could be avoided, it should be. The question was never, “How much can I endure?” The question was, “What is life asking of me in this moment?” Meaning—not misery—was always the goal.

When a parent sacrifices for a child, when someone cares for an aging loved one, when a student persists through years of education, or when a person rebuilds life after profound loss, the difficulty serves a meaningful purpose. These are hardships that often deepen character because they are expressions of love, responsibility, and commitment.

But not every difficult thing deserves our energy. Working every weekend because we cannot set boundaries, saying “yes” to every request because we fear disappointing others, or believing our worth is measured by our productivity are also difficult. The difference is that these hardships often move us away from the life we hope to build rather than toward it.

Perhaps one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves is not, “Can I do this?” but, “Is this challenge helping me become the person I want to be?” If the answer is yes, then the hardship may be worth embracing. If the answer is no, then courage may look very different. Courage may mean setting a boundary, asking for help, or choosing to rest without guilt.

The goal of life is not to prove how much we can endure. The goal is to invest ourselves in what truly matters. Every “yes” we give represents time, energy, and attention that cannot be spent elsewhere. Discernment, therefore, is just as important as resilience.

So, as you begin this week, I invite you to think differently about the difficult things in your life. Before automatically saying “yes” simply because you know you can handle it, pause long enough to ask a better question:

Is this hardship in service of something meaningful?

Because while it’s true that you can do hard things, wisdom reminds us that not every hard thing is ours to do.

— Dr. Dan

My most recent podcast was on this very topic – if you are interested, check it out here: The Meaning Project Podcast Episode 206 on Spreaker

Or on Youtube: https://youtu.be/yZaFZ1mTfUM