Embrace the Pain. Your Struggle Determines Your Success

Published: Wed, 05/09/18

If it doesn't hurt it won't grow. Pain can have a future reward.

— Anonymous

What do you want from life?

That question gets the usual responses from people when I ask it. They start listing their ambitions, the houses, cars, careers and bank balances that they want. And I've come to understand that is how most of us think about our goals. But what if we flipped that and asked instead:

What pain do you want in your life. What are you willing to struggle for?

I purposefully used the word Struggle because many of us have been programmed to believe we should actively fight against it. The fulfilling career, happiness or popularity can be achieved without a measure of pain.

Not true.

Who we are is defined by what we are willing to struggle with

I don't care what it is, there is always a price of struggle and pain to be paid. The fact is we are more

successful at the things that we are willing to suffer for. It's just a better metric to determine success.

As a writer, you have a tendency to look at the final product, the finished novel, not what it takes to get to it. What I've found is I need to be prepared for the pain and struggle to come. The need to be aware of the research I have to do, the editing, plot construction, dialogue tweaking, the dead ends, the cover designs etc. Every one of these tasks comes with its challenges, struggles and pain. And the more I'm aware of the consequences of each the better I perform.

Think about it.

Pain in all of its forms is the best way for the human being to take action. Burn yourself and see how quickly you react to take it away from that stimulus. Physical pain is there for a evolutionary purpose, giving our nervous system the parameters we need to survive and thrive. Showing us our limitations. In other words it keeps us alive. So were did we get this idea that we should avoid pain at all cost?

Society.

We've been told we should never be hurt. But unlike physical pain, psychological pain can be useful. The pain of rejection, the pain of loss, the pain of failure can be healthy and teach us how to be resilient. And that's why its dangerous to be in an environment that regards healthy doses of pain in our life as undesirable.

Only through the solving of problems can we feel happiness. And with problems come some degrees of pain. Only through overcoming the problem and the associated pain will you be able to move on to a much better quality of problem. True happiness is enjoying the problem and enjoying finding the solution. Stop wishing you didn't have them.

Your job is to get better at finding solutions.

Hope this Helps

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life is an amazing, thought provoking book that demystifies the question: What is important in your life?

5 Stars