Our culture is in love with the idea of something for nothing. ‘Absolutely FREE! Hurry in! Supplies are limited!’ Or – just take this pill, watch this video, buy this miracle exercise equipment and your problems will all be over. Faster, cheaper, easier than ever!
Hogwash. Here’s a little wake-up call for you: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
Anything that is worth having is worth the price you pay for it. So, by extension, the more something is worth, the more it’ll cost you. I think most people are okay with that rule. But have you considered what it entails? For instance, what is worth more – a new wardrobe or a slim and healthy body? A big promotion, or your kid’s success? Or, perhaps trickiest of all – the respect and admiration of people you don’t really know and don’t care about, or healthy self-respect? Hard to put a solid price on some of that stuff, isn’t it? And don’t try to fool yourself into believing that any of those things are free, because you know they’re not. However, we have left the realm of dollars and cents behind, haven’t we? This is a different kind of cost. Now we’re talking pain.
I’m not talking about Big Pain – getting in a car wreck, losing a job, a broken marriage. I don’t even mean the deep pain of things like mental illness or poverty. These kinds of pain are often unavoidable and simply have to be lived through. I mean the avoidable types of pain – going on a diet, taking a required (boring) class in school, rolling out of bed rather than hitting the snooze button. Because they’re avoidable, we tend to do exactly that – avoid them. But then we get fat, flunk out of school, roll in to work late one too many times and get fired. So, a greater pain follows the avoidance of a lesser pain. See where I’m going with this? At some point or another, you need to learn to embrace the pain.
Small pains are good for you. Reasonable levels of pain can teach you things that comfort and ease never can. Running a marathon, for instance. Many people, especially young people, find that they can run a 5K race, possibly even a 10K without training too hard – not much pain. No one can run a marathon without a lot of very painful, directed training. But if you submit to the training, if you embrace the pain, you will amaze yourself at what you can accomplish.
This same principle applies in so many different areas. Couch potatoes need to learn to embrace the pain of getting outside and moving their bodies. People struggling with money problems need to learn to budget and live within their means. Those struggling with weight and health issues need to embrace the pain of deep lifestyle changes – because the alternative in each case is to just give up and go on as before, knowing that only destruction awaits. People say, “there has to be a better way!” There is – and this is it. Embrace the pain.
I know this is not a popular train of thought, but consider – when have you ever gotten anything worth having without going through a little pain? Showing up to those worthless classes in order to get a diploma. Dating all the wrong types and all the losers before you found one person you could happily live with. How many times did you fall off the bike before learning to ride? How many falls does a baby take before learning to walk? And then, the ultimate in pain/reward – how much pain does a woman go through to have a baby? So you see, pain – at least in limited amounts – is absolutely necessary to get to the good in life. Why are we afraid of it? I can understand avoiding the big, nasty stuff, but if you avoid all pain, that means you never risk anything. And if you never risk anything, of course you avoid failure (pain!!), but you also cancel out any possibility of success. You see, there is no easy answer, no pain-free way of living a life which transcends the mediocre. And if you live a mediocre life, all you will be left with at the end will be regrets – why didn’t I do this, why didn’t I say that to her, what might my life have been like if only…?
Don’t let your life go by without taking risks, you’ll be happier if you do, no matter whether you succeed or fail – I guarantee it. I personally did one of those things that everybody (at least in this country) swears they’re gonna do ‘someday’ – I started my own business. I became my own boss. I kept the business going for almost eight years, but it finally failed. That’s right, I am a failed businessman. Cool. I don’t regret a single bit of it (at least where it wasn’t my fault), and in fact I learned a lot. I earned some money, learned a lot about finances, the legal side of business, and just how unprepared I really was. But I did that – I ran a business. Ever since then, I have been able to put ‘entrepreneur’ on my resume. I do regret being a clueless schmuck while running my business, but I do not regret starting it. Do you see? I took a chance, and while the outcome wasn’t what I expected, I’m glad I did it. (Oh, and by the way, I also ran a marathon – at the age of 48!)
Take risks, get your hands dirty, your nose a little bloody – do what the other people in your life tell you that you can’t do. Or as Eleanor Roosevelt put it: “Do one thing every day that scares you.” By the by – that doesn’t mean jump off buildings without a parachute and a plan. Take risks but educated ones. Your heart will thump just as loud, I promise. And remember, all risk involves pain at some level – but risk you choose is worth the pain. Embrace the pain.
TGC