Pain is Inevitable

Hard choices, hard work, and hard moments are expected in life. They are expected if you want to succeed. Success and being the best you can be does not magically occur. You cannot take the easy way out repeatedly and expect to be the top of your field. You cannot expect to stay up late at night, cutting your sleep cycle short, and expect to recover properly. You cannot expect every task, opportunity, or commitment to be handed to you on a silver platter. The path to success is riddled with hard. With the aspect of “hard,” comes pain. The pain is inevitable. Pain of choice. Pain of working hard, either mental or physical strain. Or the pain of a trying time in your life. The pain will come. The suffering is optional. At any point, if the pain is too much, you can stop. The suffering will end. The pain will dissipate.

Enduring “hard” and the pain it brings is what promotes growth. This growth is what will carry you to the places and abilities you seek. Without doing hard things, without having pain, you will not grow.

In the mental world of productivity, there are hard choices we have to make every day. The hard choice is choosing to say no to a party and instead opening your textbook to study. It is choosing to say no to a date with your significant other and preparing for your presentation. It is choosing to not watch the whole game on television and making sure you get enough sleep for the next day. In the moment, these are painful choices. Some of these choices can even cause you to suffer. You choose at any moment to stop the suffering and revert your choices, but you will not grow the same. Enduring and standing by the hard decisions will lead to the payoffs you seek.

In the physical world of athletics, the hard choice is what takes you from average to the best. The hard choice is going to the gym when your legs are so sore it hurts to walk. The hard choice is going for a run even when it is raining outside. The hard choice is staying after practice to run extra sprints even though the workout was brutal. All of these choices are filled with more pain and more suffering. At any moment you can choose to give into your mind and the weakness you are feeling and opt to remove the pain and suffering. You can make the decision to remove the pain but know you will not grow the same compared to if you had endured the suffering.

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you're running and you think, 'Man, this hurts, I can't take it anymore.' The 'hurt' part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself." — Haruki Murakami

See the pattern? Life is hard. Life presents hard choices. The hard choices cause pain. The pain causes you to suffer. The suffering can be stopped at any point. All you need to do is quit and give in. But if you continue on and endure the suffering and pain, you will reap the benefits of committing to the hard choice. The pain is unavoidable. The pain is inevitable. The suffering and how much you endure, is entirely up to you.