Some of the most rewarding goals in life don’t come easy—and there’s a scientific reason why your brain resists them.
In this bonus episode of Daring to Succeed, Julianna Yau Yorgan explores the difference between the Primitive Brain (wired to conserve energy and avoid risk) and the Executive Brain (designed to help you plan, adapt, and grow).
You’ll learn why “easy” often feels safer than “effective,” how to spot when you’re stuck in the “easy trap,” and science-backed ways to reframe setbacks so you can build persistence and momentum toward your goals.
Whether you’re navigating career challenges or pushing through personal growth, this episode will give you practical strategies to retrain your brain and tackle the right kind of hard.
👉 Connect with Julianna on LinkedIn for more insights on leadership and career growth.
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Episode Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Daring to Succeed podcast. I’m your host, Julianna Yau Yorgan, and today I’m dropping in for a bonus solo episode to talk about doing hard things.
In a lot of my recent conversations with guests, this is something that’s come up. I also noticed it while watching people in my personal life, with coaching clients—and myself.
The idea that some of the most rewarding accomplishments come from overcoming difficult obstacles isn’t new. Think of all the stories we hear in movies, in folklore, in the news—stories of the protagonist being faced with what seems like an impossible task, only to overcome it through determination, grit, and persistence.
Yet so many of us fall into the “easy trap”.
Magical diet pills, the one thing that will guarantee an interview, the negotiation tip that will give you the edge.
All of these are false promises that speak to our automatic, fast-processing System 1 thinking that psychologist Daniel Kahneman describes in his book *Thinking, Fast and Slow*. This is what I call the Primitive Brain—older, evolutionarily conserved systems in the brain.
These systems are wired to conserve energy, so they often equate “easy” with “efficient”—even when the easy choice isn’t the most effective.
But sometimes the things we really want to accomplish can’t be reached easily.
And that’s where so many of us fail to reach our goals and our dreams.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t strive to be efficient, or to evaluate whether a difficult task is unnecessarily difficult.
I remember a time in my corporate career when I was talking to a friend about why I was burnt out, and explained that it was because it was the wrong kind of hard.
It wasn’t hard because the task or the project was complex.
It was hard because I was spending most of my time trying to explain foundational project management best practices to a leadership team that preferred to reinvent the wheel.
When I talk about doing the hard things, I mean things we’ve convinced ourselves are hard—but can become easier with a different perspective or with practice over time.
Or things that are new to us, where we’ve learned—or been conditioned over time—that failure is bad or means we shouldn’t try.
Think about a toddler learning to walk. They’ll ask for help. They’ll use furniture or whatever is available to stand up.
They’ll fall down and get back up.
They’ll keep doing this until they’re running so quickly their parents can barely keep up!
But somehow, as we grow up, many of us unlearn how to fall and get back up.
We start to associate falling with a reason not to try anymore.
And this is something I work on with my coaching clients—unlearning that reflex to stop after a setback.
We also have executive functions—mental skills like flexible thinking, planning, and problem-solving—that give us the ability to adapt and override our automatic Primitive Brain responses.
These functions, supported by the prefrontal cortex, allow what I call our Executive Brain to step in. This is the slower, more deliberate System 2 thinking Kahneman describes, and it helps us reframe failure as a natural part of learning, or see that it’s possible to overcome negative thought patterns that keep us stuck.
I see this with my coaching clients, who will often start our sessions saying they have no idea what to do—only to tell me later in the same session that they’ve already taken steps to resolve their problem.
That’s the automatic threat-avoidance response at work—making things feel hopeless, too hard, or insisting that something else (the situation, the boss, the project, the client) must change first.
Because change can be effortful, and our brains are built to take the path that feels most efficient.
But once my clients find even small examples that a path forward exists, their Executive Brain can take the reins and create a sense of psychological safety to take the actions needed to reach their goals.
It’s normal for people to disengage when the perceived effort outweighs the perceived reward. This is a normal outcome of our brain’s cost–benefit decision processes—not a sign of weakness.
But it is also possible to unlearn unhelpful thought patterns and strengthen the neural pathways that support persistence and goal achievement. Thanks to neuroplasticity, our brains can change with intentional practice.
So if you catch yourself avoiding the hard thing, remember—it’s just your Primitive Brain trying to keep you safe. Your Executive Brain is there, ready to help you take the next step toward what you really want.
And if you’d like more of these quick, science-backed ideas to keep you moving forward between episodes, that’s exactly what I share in my newsletter and on LinkedIn. Think of it as your ongoing boost to help you tackle the right kind of hard.
That’s it for now. Until next time, remember to dare to succeed!
