It’s telling you to pay attention.
- What’s good in the long term, often doesn’t feel good now.
- Delight in the pain. It means you’re growing.
- The only ways the highs in life are so high, is by how low the lows are in contrast.
- Don’t start counting reps until it hurts.
The strangest thing about pain is often what is best for you in the long term, is painful right now. What’s better, that chocolate dessert, or that broccoli? The run, or the TV show? The work, or the play?
You know what you have to do, it’s all about the choice, and the reality of life is you’re set up to fail. You’re set up to enjoy the short term pleasure, even if it means long term pain. Only by choosing the pain, and choosing to succeed, will you get to where you want to go.
The other thing about pain is it often means you’re growing. That first time you get on skates, you fall and it hurts. But you’re learning to skate. So you get up and you fall again. And again. And again. But eventually, you start to learn how to stand on ice, then move on ice, then glide on ice.
It’s the same thing as that exercise you do that causes your legs to be so sore you can’t walk up a flight of stairs. It makes you stronger. Stretching your mind through constant learning, being forced to change false beliefs, and anything else you do that hurts, if often a sign that you’re growing. Even if you’re designed to avoid it, think about what that pain represents, and if it’s good for you in the long run, embrace it.
One other note about pain, and specifically about learning things, or exercise, is about how to grow. Most people recognize the fact that when you’re working out, the pain is a good thing. It represents you pushing your limit, and that limit keeps moving forward the more you do. The pain is causing you to grow.
The real secret is not just doing 10 reps, or 20 reps, the secret is not starting to count your reps until it starts to hurt. Everything before that is within tolerance. You’re not really pushing yourself, and you’re not really growing. If you start counting once it starts to hurt, you will grow. You will progress. You will change. Pain is the trigger you need.
There’s an exercise I’ve done a few times in my life called a lifeline. You have a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle from left to right, then a line at the top, and a line at the bottom. You have three horizontal lines. Across the middle of the page, on the middle horizontal line, divide the years of your life into numbers with space in between. 0-5-10-15-20-25-30-35-40-45-50-55-60-65-70-75-80, or however old you are.
The top horizontal line is highs in your life, the bottom line is lows, and the middle line is everything is just moving along. Now, plot your life story. What are the highs, what are the lows at each stage in your life. The birth of your first child might be a high, losing your father to cancer might be a low. After you write the major highs and lows, connect them all with a line of best fit. Just have it go up and down based on the moments of your life.
What you will find is there are periods of highs and lows but there are relatively few moments of middle of the road. Where things just plod along. One other thing to notice when you look again at your lifeline is the moments of pain, of being low on the chart, are often followed by moments of joy, being high on the chart. The most amazing thing is the contrast between the two. The highs are so high, because the lows were so low. The pleasure was made that much more sweet because of the pain.
Do your best to remember that as you are going through pain and suffering, that joy and growth are what is coming up next.
