277. You Can Do Hard Things | Can You Stop Doing The Easy Ones?
You can crush everything on your to-do list and still lose the plot at 9 PM. The issue isn't discipline. It's the difference between self-discipline and self-regulation.
Last updated: October 20, 2026
You Don't Need to Get Better at Doing Hard Things
Marshall Goldsmith wrote something in What Got You Here Won't Get You There that stopped me cold: "We spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do. We don't spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop."
His book is about leading teams and businesses. This episode is about how high-performing women lead themselves. The lesson is the same.
You are probably exceptional at doing hard things. Wearing every hat, slaying a to-do list built for eight people, crushing a workout, achieving more in a week than many people achieve all month. Which makes it even more frustrating when the kitchen cupboards or the 7-Eleven snack run happens at the 11th hour — when you were this close to winning the day.
You did hard things all day long. So why does it feel so hard to say no to the late-night cravings? Because self-discipline and self-regulation are not the same skill, and high-performing women almost always have too much of one and not enough of the other.
Self-Discipline vs. Self-Regulation — They're Not the Same Thing
In a study published in Frontiers in Psychology, researchers drew a critical distinction: self-discipline emphasizes regularity and restraint — the feeling of being able to exercise control when compelled to act. It's about doing what you should do when you don't want to do it.
Self-regulation — or what I prefer to call self-mastery — is different. It's about making the healthily restrained choice in a moment of emotional activation, dysregulation, or temptation. Zimmerman and Kitsantas found that while self-control and self-discipline share some common elements, they differ in measurement structure. Self-control focuses on regulating behavior and making choices in the moment, while self-discipline emphasizes consistency, effort, and goals over time.
Here's the version that matters for food freedom: self-discipline is doing hard things. Self-regulation is stopping easy things. Here's more on why high-performing women struggle with food freedom despite being disciplined in every other area.
Think of doing hard things as building the muscle of self-discipline. You already know you can do this. You've had massive habit streaks, completed tough programs, and raised a family. Doing hard things is our Fire element — and you most likely already have fire in spades.
If you wrestle with food when you can conquer everything else in your life, it makes zero sense until you understand this distinction. When most people think of self-discipline, they're only thinking of half the equation — building routines and pushing through when they don't feel like it. But that definition doesn't include the even more vital skill that high-performing women need: the ability to stop doing the easy thing.
For so many of us, reaching for food when we're tired, depleted, or emotional is the easiest thing in the world because we've done it so many times. So we throw more fiery self-discipline at the situation, thinking that will help. But all that does is make us better at doing hard things — while the easy thing, the one that actually matters, stays untouched.
The Dark Side of Discipline Nobody Talks About
Sometimes you get so good at doing the hard things — whether you want to or not — that you override your nervous system and your own body. And that makes it even harder to stop doing the easy thing, like ordering Little Caesars at 9 PM.
Craig Ballantyne and Daniel Woodrum wrote about the dark side of discipline as doing impressive, difficult, disciplined-looking things while avoiding the problems that actually matter. Here's my unique take on it: the dark side of discipline for high-performing women is piling more regulation, somatic, and personal growth strategies on top of a challenging relationship with food instead of learning the deeper skill of self-regulation without always needing a tool.
I can only speak from lived experience, but I suspect this resonates. I have the tools — emotion coaching, Dance Alchemy®, Ocean Brain Returns, Drama Triangle triage — and they help enormously. But sometimes I over-rely on them. I try to do all of them so I never get dysregulated enough that a craving surfaces in the first place. That's a full-time job on top of running a business and caring for the most beautiful fur baby.
And here's where it gets really dark: sometimes forcing myself to use a tool makes me more tired and depleted. I've expended valuable energy maintaining a habit when a break would have served me better. And when I over-prioritize doing the thing I don't want to do, I miss out on the chance to practice just feeling the craving, the urge, the sensation — just sitting without reacting. That is a powerful skill all on its own.
You Don't Need More Fire. You Need Earth and Air.
High-performing women usually don't need more fire. They need aimed fire — and it's hard to aim when you're not focused and grounded. You probably need Earth and Air, in that order.
Earth first. Presence. Slowing down. Sitting with a temptation or compulsion and just breathing. This is such an important first step that most of my ReWrite Rituals have it built right in at the very beginning. Emotion coaching starts in Earth. Dance Alchemy® starts in Earth. An Ocean Brain Return is literally a return to presence and the body.
Then Air. Once you're present and grounded, you apply a new way of thinking about the easy thing you want to stop doing. You notice the inner narratives — maybe I'll do better tomorrow — even though you know that indulging today makes it harder to stop tomorrow because inertia is now working against you. Or I don't even care right now — but deep down, you know you still care. You're just exhausted and you need a nap more than an entire sleeve of Oreos.
Once you notice those thoughts after slowing down, it becomes easier to challenge them. This is what a lot of mindset work gets wrong — it expects you to jump into telling a new story when you're living from the neck up or your head is spinning from four hours of over-functioning.
Earth first. Always. I go deeper into the element sequence and why it matters here.
7 Easy Things High-Performing Women Need to Stop Doing
You might hear this list and think these aren't easy. But easy doesn't always mean low effort. Easy often refers to the path of least resistance — and for high-performing women, that path ironically involves more effort and more willpower.
These are my seven deadly sins of the high-performing woman, with backup from Marshall Goldsmith's list of twenty habits that hold successful people back.
1. Overworking. Goldsmith calls it "adding too much value." You know the drill.
2. Rushing. If you've spent your entire lifetime going faster, slowing down — which should feel easier — is actually harder. Goldsmith's version: "winning too much," including turning everything into a race.
3. Performing. Goldsmith's version: "telling the world how smart we are." On Instagram, it's telling the world how rich, successful, or spiritually woke you are — all while pretending you're not a human on a growth journey like everyone else.
4. Outsourcing worth. Goldsmith has "passing judgment." For high-performing women, this often looks like judging external metrics or other people's opinions and making it mean something about your worth as a human being.
5. Operating from pressure. Treating every day like a performance review instead of a practice.
6. Living in the gap. Always focused on how much further you have to go versus how far you've come. Goldsmith calls it "failing to express gratitude." My addition: Let me explain why the gap clearly indicates it's not working and never will.
7. Destination addiction. Believing a future goal or milestone will create the happiness and contentment you're not allowing yourself now. Goldsmith had this as a bonus item — goal obsession — because it isn't inherently bad, but it can become so consuming that it drives every other harmful habit above it.
I did a full deep dive on all seven of these in the Seven Deadly Sins blog series.
Your Embodied Activation
Pick one easy thing from this list and practice not doing it for a week.
Maybe you pick rushing — and you intentionally stay in the slow lane for a 20-minute commute, or you pick the longest line at the grocery store. Maybe you pick living in the gap — and every time you notice yourself judging your rate of progress, you counter the judgment with three pieces of evidence for how much progress you actually are making.
I also noticed that my first impulse to help you stop doing something was to give you a new discipline to try — and that has me giggling at myself. I can do hard things, and I can think of hard things to do. Not doing the easy ones is a work in progress.
A gentle replacement for the easy thing you're moving away from can be a helpful bridge. Then, with enough practice, maybe you notice you've slowed down and softened enough that the easy, unhelpful things start to melt away on their own. In episode 275, I talked about why more effort backfires for high-performing women.
The Hardest Easy Thing of All
This is exactly why the Food Freedom Fantasy method is taught in the order it's taught. Earth first, always, with the rest of the elements following in a sequence that has real intention behind it.
The method gives you a Fire Starter archetype to help you do hard things. Honestly, you could probably teach that class yourself. What I've noticed is that most women who come into my world have never worked with the other half — a Sanctuary archetype who helps you stop doing the easy things.
Including the sneakiest easy thing on the list that I saved for last: grinding it out alone.
For a high-performing woman, doing it all yourself is the path of least resistance. You've white-knuckled your way through everything else, so the familiar move is to add food freedom to the pile of things you'll figure out solo through sheer effort. Asking for support, letting someone witness the process, slowing down enough to be coached — that's the hard easy thing. It's what self-regulation looks like from the inside.
FAQs: Self-Discipline and Emotional Eating
Q: What's the difference between self-discipline and self-regulation? A: Self-discipline is the ability to do what you should do when you don't want to do it — building routines, pushing through resistance, maintaining consistency. Self-regulation is the ability to stop doing the easy, unhelpful thing in a moment of emotional activation. Research by Zimmerman and Kitsantas shows they differ in measurement structure: self-discipline emphasizes regularity and goals over time, while self-regulation focuses on in-the-moment behavioral choices.
Q: Why doesn't more discipline fix emotional eating? A: Because emotional eating for high-performing women is rarely a discipline problem — it's a regulation problem. Adding more fiery discipline often means overriding your nervous system more aggressively, which creates more depletion, which makes the easy thing (food) even more appealing when your resources are exhausted. Research has shown that self-discipline, self-efficacy, and performance are connected through the feeling of being in control — but that feeling can become its own trap when control becomes chronic.
Q: What does "Earth first, always" mean? A: In the five-element framework inside Food Freedom Fantasy, Earth represents presence, grounding, and slowing down. Starting with Earth means addressing your physiology before your mindset. You can't think your way into a new story when your nervous system is in overdrive. Once you're present and grounded, Air (new thinking) actually has a chance to land.
Q: Can tools and practices become their own form of self-sabotage? A: Yes — when you over-rely on tools to prevent dysregulation from ever happening, you miss the chance to build the raw skill of sitting with discomfort without reacting. The dark side of discipline for growth-oriented women is piling more somatic strategies onto food struggles instead of building the capacity to feel a craving and let it pass. The tools are medicine. Too much medicine is still too much.
Q: What's the difference between Marshall Goldsmith's list and yours? A: His list targets leadership behaviors in business. Mine targets self-leadership behaviors in high-performing women who struggle with food. Several of his points — adding too much value, winning too much, failing to express gratitude, goal obsession — map directly onto patterns I see in women who can crush everything except their relationship with food. His is a business book. Mine is the food freedom version.
So. Can You Stop Doing the Easy Ones?
The Food Freedom Fantasy method teaches the full elemental sequence — Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Ether — in the order your nervous system needs it. And it gives you both archetypes: a Fire Starter to help you do the hard things, and a Sanctuary to help you stop doing the easy ones.
The full Food Freedom Fantasy coached experience is open right now at Founding Fangirl pricing. The entire method, nine private sessions with me, the complete Dance Alchemy® library, and lifetime access to everything I ever add. Regular price is $1,497 — I'm opening eight spots for $497 until October 31st. Use code FOUNDINGFANGIRL (all caps) at checkout for pay-in-full. Need a payment plan or a special Embodied credit code? Email kayla@embodiedwritingwarrior.com and I'll set you up. More program information here.
And if your honest, on-purpose choice is to start solo, the Food Freedom Fantasy book is $7.99 and it will meet you exactly where you are.
But if some part of you has been whispering that she's tired of doing this alone — that's not weakness talking. That's your Sanctuary showing up early.
To Your Power & Freedom,
Kayla
