Redefining Hard
What a cave in Belize—and a whole lot of discomfort—taught me about confidence.
There was a moment—somewhere between the pounding waterfall and the cold quiet of the cave—when I realized I had never been so uncomfortable. I was soaked, chilled, dehydrated, and mentally frayed. Suspended in a harness, I’d just rappelled into a cave behind a waterfall in the Belizean jungle. For nearly 45 minutes, I crouched on slick rock, trying to help guide a rescue litter through the torrent’s path. It was the final drill in a 13-hour wilderness rescue simulation, and I was running on fumes.
I slept for almost 12 hours that night. And in the months that followed, I found myself returning to that experience—not because it was fun (it wasn’t), but because it permanently shifted my sense of what’s difficult. That cave changed how I see challenges. After surviving that, the things I once labeled “hard”—tight deadlines, difficult conversations, sudden change—felt far more manageable.
Big Idea
Stretching yourself doesn’t just build character—it rewires your sense of what’s hard.
Psychologists call it retrospective reappraisal—the idea that once you’ve endured something intense or challenging, your brain starts to reinterpret past experiences through a new lens. What once felt overwhelming begins to look… doable. That’s not a trick of memory; it’s your brain logging proof that you’re capable of more than you thought.
Confidence doesn’t always come from prep or planning—it often comes from pushing through. Once you’ve got a “hard thing” in your back pocket, future stressors lose some of their power.
The Story: Routines, Ropes, and the Reframe
Before the Belize trip, I wasn’t exactly adventurous. I liked control. I hadn’t even traveled internationally. But something nudged me to sign up for a cave and wilderness rescue course in Central America. Most of the week was intense but manageable. But the final day—the 13-hour scenario—pushed me beyond anything I’d done before.
I wasn’t feeling great to start with. By the time I was rappelling into the cave, I was cold, underfed, and mentally dulled. And once I got inside, it was just me, the waterfall, and a complicated simulated rescue. For nearly an hour, I stayed there, soaked and borderline hypothermic, helping to guide a stretcher out of the waterfall’s path.
It wasn’t heroic. It was gritty, uncomfortable, and unglamorous. But I didn’t quit. And that changed everything.
The Psychology Behind It
After we push through a hard experience, our brains often reappraise the past—we don’t just remember it differently; we give it new meaning. This process is well-documented in emotional psychology. Researchers have found that our retrospective interpretation of stressful events often has more lasting impact than how we felt going into them.
In one study, people’s recollection of a challenge (how meaningful or manageable it seemed in hindsight) was a better predictor of long-term confidence than their initial anticipation (Weitzman et al., 2024). Another study showed that veterans who made sense of their past struggles in a positive or valuable way showed better psychological outcomes over time.
What does that mean in real life? Basically, every challenging experience has the potential to become a confidence deposit—if we reflect on it the right way.
Takeaways: How to Reframe Your Own Limits
Here’s how to turn discomfort into growth—and make it stick:
Choose something that stretches you. Not a leap, but a stretch. Something that unsettles your comfort zone just enough.
Push through. Even if you’re stumbling. Even if you hate it. Completion is the key.
Revisit it. Afterward, go back and compare it to things you used to find hard. Notice how your mental scale is shifting.
Write it down. A small journal entry, a list, a memory bank. Keep a record of the hard things you’ve done.
Use it as a lens. Next time you’re stressed, ask: “Is this harder than the cave?” Chances are, it’s not.
The Quiet Confidence of Having Been Through It
I’m not fearless. But I am better at distinguishing between discomfort and danger. That’s something I earned in Belize.
That trip didn’t just test my endurance—it redefined it. And now, when I hit friction in everyday life, I don’t need to hype myself up. I think back to that cave, that waterfall, that harness—and the fact that I made it through.
Because once you’ve done something truly hard, you never look at “hard” the same way again.
