We naturally avoid pain. This is totally understandable because pain is by definition unpleasant. We want a life of comfort and ease. Unfortunately, too much comfort and ease leads to disease (pain).
Buddha said, “Life is suffering.” This doesn’t mean that you have to live life miserable and depressed. Quite the opposite actually. Without suffering (pain) there would be no pleasure. Life’s greatest pleasures are on the other side of pain.
Luckily you can often choose how and when to suffer. There’s no avoiding pain completely, but you can use pain strategically to VASTLY increase the amount of pleasure you experience in life. That’s what this post is about.
Athletes know this, billionaires know this, and every above average man or women practices what I’m about to tell you whether they realize it or not.
Pain is Coming
The pain is coming. You can have it now or you can have it later, but there’s no way around it. You do however have a choice of benefiting greatly from your pain.
For example, let’s say you have an exam coming up in 2 weeks. You have two options 1) You study now and feel the pain of discipline in hopes to earn a high score on your exam or 2) you blow off studying and instead party/play video games and deal with the pain of a failed exam on your permanent record.
Option one is temporary pain with lasting pleasure, while option two is temporary pleasure with lasting pain. You will experience pain either way, but the pain-to-pleasure ratio is vastly different. Option one is the logical option since it provides to most benefit and least pain.
Seems like option one is the obvious choice but many people choose option 2. I don’t know why exactly. Maybe you can tell me. All I know is that using pain to your benefit is a ‘life hack’ that separates winners from losers. Delayed gratification provides the biggest payoff 100% of the time.
There are two ways to look at pain – 1) as a miserable, scary feeling that you fear and avoid, or 2) Something that should be sought after in order to better yourself.
In other words, you can suffer the pain of discipline or the pain or regret. The pain of discipline is small but yields a lot of pleasure overall, whereas the pain of regret is agonizing and may last forever. Choose wisely.
It Doesn’t Count Until It Hurts
A reported once asked Muhammad Ali how many sit ups he does while training for a fight. Ali responded “I don’t count until they hurt. Those are the only ones that count.“
You see, you can go through the motions in the gym and get nowhere. If you stop as soon as you feel pain then you will get nowhere. Many aren’t focused on working through the pain. They don’t really understand that pain is productive.
This is why people make no progress after months/years of training. They’re too casual and it leads to self sabotage, wasted time, and even more pain (nothing to show for your time and effort). When training you must push yourself passed the pain barrier. You must make yourself uncomfortable to grow. Pushing past your limit is the only way to get better. It’s uncomfortable, it’s difficult and, yes, it’s painful but it’s necessary to make progress. You become a stronger person and can live a better life.
Maybe you feel the pain of depriving yourself of chocolate cake while on your fitness journey. You have the option to suffer the temporary displeasure of not eating junk in order to enjoy the lasting pleasure of feeling and looking awesome. If you have a moment of weakness (we all do) remember, Nothing tastes as good as being healthy feels.
The bottom line here is to make the pain count for you and not against you. If you’re going to suffer you might as well get a reward for it.
Case in point, if The Greatest never trained through the pain he would have got his ass kicked in the ring. But the pain never stopped him. In fact in shaped him into the Legend he is today.
Seek Pain and Push Through It
If you’re down in the dumps it’s likely because you aren’t making progress. When you feel stuck you tend to feel gloomy and blue. So what should you do? You should seek pain to get unstuck. Progress is the ultimate satisfaction and it can only be achieve through painstaking work.
Human beings are genetically wired to conserve energy (avoid pain). Therefore you must OVERRIDE your system and seek pain. It’s the only way to make it.
It sounds crazy to seek pain to most people, especially in this day and age. We have been coddled too much and life is easy. We’re encouraged to indulge every whim and never to deny ourselves. This is a slippery slope, as the more pleasure we get the more we crave it because we need more and more to scratch the itch. Thus needing more indulgence next time to feel the same amount of pleasure. This creates a vicious cycle that only ends one way unless you put a stop to it.
The problem is that it’s easy to coast. Why would you do something like read up on your industry when you could ‘recharge’ with a Netflix binge? Why would you go for a run when you could easily plop on the couch and zone out for an hour instead? Why cook wholesome meals when you can have fast food delivered to your doorstep?
Don’t get me wrong, the convenience and ease of modern living is incredible, but it’s also killing us by destroying our potential. It’s too easy to opt out instead of invest in yourself to grow. Many take the easy route. Hence why the average person is broke and overweight.
Some folks can’t see past their nose and many don’t think past their next meal. They’ll take the easy route 10/10 times when it presents itself. That’s too bad for them but that’s good news for you. That’s your competition and, with some planning and a little work ethic, you can get so far ahead they will never be able to catch you no matter how hard they worked for the rest of their life.
Lean into the Pain
Pushing through pain builds character. And ALL noteworthy men and women have great character.
When you feel pain lean into it. It means you’re actually getting somewhere. Pain is the price of progress. Things don’t get easier, you get better. Math problems don’t get any easier, you just get better at solving them.
When you hit a mental wall keeping going until you find a way to breakthrough it. It’s painful and there are a thousand easier things you could do instead, but keep fighting. The price of improvement is paid in pain (the struggle), and you must earn your rights to level up through discipled work. This is how you move up the ranks in your field.
Pain Builds Character
Character is earned. It’s forged in the fires of adversity. It’s subjecting yourself to the pain of sacrifice in the hopes of gaining something you desire. You might fail. You might not get what you want even after working hard at it. But you need to try. This requires you to lean into the pain and fight through it until what used to be painful no longer hurts. This is a breakthrough and you’ve now leveled up and are ready for what’s next.
So when the pain begins, keep going through it. The pain is a signal you are approaching your limit. If you push through your limit you become stronger and when you get stronger life gets better. You build character. And Character is the number one factor for living a good life.
As I said before, pain isn’t all bad – The spoils of war are always sweeter after a hard fought campaign. You need to sacrifice and invest in order to be ready for the fight that’s coming your way. Anything worth having is worth fighting for. If it not worth a fight than it’s not worth having.
The things you want most won’t be given to you easily, you need to take them. And you must be worthy of it if you want to keep it. How do you become worthy? You prove it. You build the character that warrants such things. You earn the desirable traits that are a byproduct of accomplishing things others don’t (by doing things other won’t).
Earn Your Rights
If people only knew they could have their cake and eat it too IF, and only IF, they give up cake for a while. What I mean is if you do the hard work of building muscle you will reach a point where you can binge drink and eat chocolate cake all weekend and still have rippling six-pack abs on Monday. (I don’t recommend binge drinking, but I do recommend getting to a point you could binge all weekend and still have a six-pack on Monday.) This is because building lean muscle increases your metabolism to a point your body becomes a furnace that burns up everything you put in it.
But you have to earn it.
The people that make it look easy are the ones who failed miserably more times than you’ve even tried.
Want to get shredded? Great, beer is off limits. Can’t go without suds for 30 days? Then I have bad news for you bud.
Pain is a Good Thing
Life is suffering. There’s no way around it. In life you either suffer the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.
Regret is much harder to deal with. There’s no going back in time to do the things you wish you had. Once the last gain of sand drains from the top chamber of the hour glass times up. That’s a wrap and there’s nothing you can do in this world to go back and alleviate the pain of your regret.
So if you’re having a hard time, take a good hard look at your self. How did you get here? Did you really give 100% to your goal? In order to have a good life you need to lean into pain. It will pay off.
Examples of productive pain are training in the gym, studying until your brain is fried, reading until your eyes bleed, and building something until your body is sore and your tools ware out. If that sounds unpleasant, good, that’s the point.
I’m not going to sugar coat it, it’s hard work building something and doesn’t get any easier. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It’s well worth it.
Funny how the best way to avoid pain is to seek it.
So do the hard work, feel the pain and relish in it knowing that your life will get better because you get better. Because in order for life to change for you, you have to change. The best way to change is to change your attitude toward pain.
P.S.
How many of you are where you want to be in life? Are you getting everything you dreamed of? If not it’s time to reconcile. When you see a fork in the road how often do you take the easy route? Would you make the same choice again or would you choose the other route knowing what you know now? Often times the path of least resistance results in the most long term pain. While facing the pain head on as soon as it appears is temporary struggle with a permanent victory.
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