Toddlers and teenagers hate it when you ask them hard questions that oppose their immediate desires.
"Are you sure that you want to eat that entire pack of sour skittles?"
"Are you sure that it's a good idea to spend hours playing video games all weekend?"
"Are you sure that you want to spend all your money on going to the movies and eating out rather than saving some of it?"
It also turns out that adults hate hard questions too...
Are you sure you have enough money to buy that house? Or that new car?
Are you sure that you don't have more self-work to do before you date or get married?
Are you sure that it's wise to focus on building a new business or chasing a new career opportunity (with more higher pay) if it will distract you from the self-work you were previously focusing on?
It's human to hate resisting our impulses and desires and to press into the long, difficult, and slow path...
But in the long run, it’s the only one that leads us somewhere meaningful. Because there is no such thing as fast money, dreams, or easy marriages.
Which is why it’s best to embrace the difficulty as it comes, to ask yourself the hard questions by choice, and to make the wise decisions today rather than to procrastinate and wait until the repercussions of poor decisions create enough emotional pain to do the motivating for us.