Pain.
I bet this word has already caused a slew of negative emotions to populate your mind.
Maybe memories of an emotionally painful experience, or imagery of a physically excruciating event come to mind.
For most of us, pain is something to be avoided.
All it has ever brought is misery and suffering. After all, we are hardwired to think like this since, for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, pain was often synonymous with death.
And while I can’t convince you that feeling pain can be enjoyable, I can help you mentally reframe to be able to deal with it better.
It is a cold, hard truth of life that pain will be abundant in your life whether you like it or not.
But this does not have to be something to dread.
See, the effects of pain, are largely determined by what your preconceptions are about pain.
Let me explain.
A study showed that, when told about the negative health effects of stress, participants exhibited far more negative effects in response to stress than participants who were told specifically about the positive health benefits of stress.
The participants who were told that stress was good for health did indeed see health improvements — even though the stimulus was the same!
What this proves, is that our view on stress can significantly change how it affects us.
And this is no different for pain as well. It functions very similarly to stress.
This means that by changing your perspective, you can extract the maximum value whenever you experience pain because after all, you can’t escape it.
Just reading this article is going to challenge the preconceptions that you may have, and is your first step to building a life where you seek pain.
With Pain ALWAYS Comes Growth
I’ve been thinking about this a lot because it’s a pretty bold statement to make.
But as far as I can tell, it makes sense.
It’s the reason why ‘pain is a privilege’ is the title of this post.
With any type of pain, whether that be physical or emotional pain, there is ALWAYS the potential for growth.
And with any meaningful growth, pain is usually also present.
That’s why, if your goal is to grow as much as possible, going the painful path will almost always yield the most growth.
Most people hate this reality because it’s difficult. But I see this difficulty as a positive thing.
Pain being the main catalyst for growth, is why hardly anybody gets to where they want to be in life. The barrier to entry is too high.
But if you can learn to manage pain and deal with it well, it’s almost guaranteed that you will stand out from the crowd.
As I said before, we are hardwired to avoid pain. But for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, as hard as they tried, they were always going to experience healthy doses of pain.
That’s why most of them still ended up being competent, badass humans.
But the modern world has made it so easy to become comfortable, that if you aren’t actively seeking pain, you are most likely deficient in it.
But going back to the part about pain ALWAYS coming with growth, this is true, but only if you want to grow from the experience.
And that’s the key part right there.
See, anyone can experience pain, and everybody does, but not everyone comes out the other side in a better place than they were in before.
There are four possible outcomes of a painful experience.
- You grow from it physically
- You learn from it and grow emotionally/mentally
- You Injure yourself
- You degrade your mental health
The first two outcomes happen when a person approaches pain correctly and wants to experience growth from the experience.
The second two outcomes happen when someone doesn’t have the right approach to experiencing pain or does not want to grow from the experience.
An example is self-harm. This type of pain is destructive and will degrade your mental health, not improve it.
An example of a positive approach to pain is working out.
We all acknowledge that working out is a positive experience because it can result in physical and mental growth.
Still, even with exercise, you must have the correct approach to it, otherwise, you can injure yourself.
Part of having the correct approach to pain is being able to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of experiencing it.
Because with this ‘pain is a privilege’ mentality, it’s very easy for me to go recommend you run a marathon every day.
But I don’t do that.
Why? It’s because the negatives of running a marathon every day far outweigh the positives for me.
Therefore this form of pain is not smart to seek unless you have goals which means that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.
In the same way, chopping off your arm is not a smart decision for most people.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going back on my statement. You still CAN experience emotional growth from chopping off your limb: you will likely be much more grateful and appreciative of the 3 limbs you have left, as well as the aspects of life you are still able to enjoy.
But for pretty much everyone, the obvious negatives of losing your arm probably outweigh the benefits of doing it.
Therefore I am not going to recommend that you do this.
What About Pain That Isn’t Intentional?
These cases are more difficult to take full advantage of since the pain associated with them can often be much higher.
Yet everything in this article so far still applies.
With pain, there is ALWAYS the potential for growth.
It’s just more difficult to see the positive path because unintentional pain can come with a lot of extra baggage: self-pity, hate, anger etc.
If your Wife cheats on you, there is probably large amounts of emotional pain associated with that. But you can choose to grow emotionally from the experience allowing you to build a better relationship with someone new in the future.
If you were stabbed, there would be large amounts of physical pain associated with that. But you can choose to grow mentally from the experience, building up mental resilience and learning how to avoid it in the future.
With unintentional pain, there is rarely a situation where you will grow physically.
It’s almost always an emotional progression. But I would argue that developing yourself mentally is even more important than growing physically.
So there is a path to growth, even in the worst forms of pain (as long as you don’t die… Obviously).
It can just be difficult to find sometimes.
But if you choose to grow, you can always find the positive in any pain.
