My niece, age four, was practicing her letters. It was not going well.

“This is is the [most] tewwible W I’ve evew seen!” she said angrily, already imposing unrealistic expectations upon herself at her tender age.

This is normal behavior for a four-year-old, but it is nonetheless painful to witness. As an adult, I wish I could have helped her to understand that it’s okay to create letters that aren’t perfect—there is no reason that she should feel bad about herself. But that’s not the kind of thing you can tell somebody. They have to figure it out for themselves.

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I’m not sure who we have to blame for it. The Puritans? The media? Regardless of where it came from, so many of us have the same problem: We think that doing something worthwhile has to be difficult.

Consider exercise. So many people say that the hate working out. Honestly, if the only way that I could get exercise was to show up at a gym and operate some machinery in a fluorescent-lit room, I would hate working out too. But there are lots of different ways to stay fit. Gardening, building stuff, hiking, playing games…there are a million ways to get some exercise while having fun or accomplishing something meaningful. Why do so many of us assume it has to be miserable?

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