Your mind bolts the moment things get hard

Let us watch this closely, for the timing of the bolt reveals the whole of it. The difficulty is not in the way of the work; it is the work — the mind flees exactly when the task turns hard, but that hard part is not an obstacle between you and the real work, it is the real work, and the reward lives on the far side of the very discomfort you escape; fleeing the difficulty is fleeing the thing itself at the threshold where it was about to begin. The flinch is trained, and can be untrained — the bolt is not a fixed limit but a reflex you taught your mind, ten thousand escapes at a time, and what was trained in can be trained out by staying, for the groove runs both ways. And stay a little past the flinch, and let the depth open — not heroic focus, but noticing the urge to flee and remaining a minute past it, because the drift comes right at the threshold and if you hold there the hard thing often loosens and begins to move; each staying wears the fleeing shallower and grows the depth back. What are you working on when the bolt tends to come?