Pain Aversion is Killing Your Potential
- what could you accomplish if you were just 10% tougher?
Beyond your pursuit of pleasure, everything you do is for the avoidance of pain. Everything. I’m not calling you “weak,” but chances are that if you’re reading this and you’re human you have a pain aversion. We all do. How you improve upon your pain aversion is entirely up to you, but I guarantee your ability to manage pain WILL have an impact on your success and enjoyment in life.
Stop reading this for 3 seconds and look down at your chest. Did it rise and fall as you took in air and expelled it? Breathing is the first and most unconscious thing we do to avoid the pain of not breathing (see: suffocating). Our bodies are hardwired to breath so we don’t die. We’re hardwired to avoid pain.
The same holds true for things like eating food and drinking water. Think about how it feels to be hungry… wait long enough to eat and it starts to hurt. Same is true for drinking fluids… dehydration literally puts us into a state of panic as our body screams at us for water. Now think about interpersonal relationships and how it feels to be lonely, rejected, insulted, confronted, or assaulted. All of these things hurt, deeply, so we do what we can to avoid them because we’re hardwired to avoid pain.
Remember your last sunburn? Your last stomach flu? Your last sprain or bone break? Remember the last time you stubbed your toe? Got a paper cut? Would you willingly do any of those things again? Probably not because we’re hardwired to avoid pain.
Did you go to college? Get a degree? Educate yourself? Develop a trade or skill? What else have you done to earn money, status, security? All of these things, pain avoidance.
From an evolutionary standpoint, avoiding pain is a good thing because it kept us from being eaten by dinosaurs (that would hurt), it keeps us from playing with fire (melting skin hurts), and it has been the underpinning for all medical and agricultural innovations and pretty much everything else we’ve invented as a species. Even our legal system was built upon man’s basic drive to avoid pain. Punishment = pain. Whether we’re avoiding the pain of disease and illness, hunger, heartache, exposure to the elements, social outcast, or physical and emotional distress humans have developed many sophisticated ways to avoid pain, but how we accomplish this is and how we live through the experience of pain is one of those skills that separate the successful from the unsuccessful.
Below are 5 ways successful people manage pain.
1. Ownership
It sounds simple to take ownership of one’s mistakes, but in practice it’s actually very hard. Pride/Ego precludes many people from actually saying the words, “That’s my fault.” As in, “My startup failed and that’s my fault.” It’s easier to blame market conditions, or bad partners, or an unfortunate business deal, or a faulty product. It’s hard to say, “You’re upset and that’s my fault.” It’s easier to blame the other person for being too sensitive or weak. In that process of avoiding the pain of accountability we deny ourselves the opportunity to develop strong character, we deny those we’ve hurt the opportunity for closure and forgiveness, and we deny those who admire us the opportunity to deepen their admiration, all of which are underpinnings of a successful existence. Owning pain makes us better. Successful people embrace opportunities to own a mistake. They know the power that ownership brings them.
2. Stress Management
Pain puts stress on our human organism. Our mind and body feel the effects of pain on a cellular level and that impacts how we function physically, physiologically, and psychologically. Simply put, how we manage our stress every day will determine how healthy we are. We’ve all heard the expression that you “have nothing if you don’t have your health.” Well, you can work 24/7/365 toward whatever goal you’ve set for yourself, but if you get sick along the way or sick once you’ve reached your destination your reality is that your pursuits and achievements won’t matter, only reclaiming your health will matter. Logic would dictate that how well you manage stress will have a direct correlation on your enjoyment of life. This is often where successful people excel and unsuccessful people fail. Healthy practices like meditation, exercise, mindfulness, therapy, finding harmony, expressing gratitude, and positive self-talk are how the successful win at the stress management game. It’s how successful people defeat and/or manage their pain.
3. Keeping It Natural
Toxic products and synthetic chemicals put incredible stress on our body. Confession: I own a natural products company so as a matter of professional transparency I will admit that I believe I have a distinct advantage in matters of health and wellness because, frankly, I live a very non-toxic life. I don’t have any of the conventional synthetic health, body care, or cleaning products in my home that most Americans do so I’m not exposed to all of the toxins many Americans are. As such, I don’t get sick, all of my bloodwork is perfect, I don’t use any synthetic medications, and I don’t suffer any chronic illness. I eat very cleanly, about 95% vegan and organic, so I’m not exposed to as much of the toxic food most Americans are. I dislike being preached at and I respect that you might not either so all I will say is that the proof is in the pudding: Keeping your lifestyle as natural and non-toxic as possible works to reduce chemical stress and physical pain and improve health and wellness. I attribute much of my success in life to keeping it natural.
4. Love
The simple truth is that sharing love with another human being has been shown to be the most important thing we can do to ensure good health and successful navigation of a difficult life — and life is difficult. An 80-year Harvard study found that a happy relationship was the most important factor in living a long, healthy life:
“Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives, the study revealed. Those ties protect people from life’s discontents (see: pain), help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes. That finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-city participants.”
5. Get Tough
After 29 years of martial arts, 8 years of rugby, 20 years of lifting weights, multiple cross-country road trips living in a van, overseas travel, and various other athletic challenges I’ve learned that strong people are hard to kill. They’re also hard to fluster and have an easier time navigating life’s pains than those who don’t push themselves physically to improve their pain threshold. If training with tier 1 and 2 military operators and professional fighters has taught me anything it’s that the mind gives up before the body does, but the mind is plastic. The mind can be trained to tolerate pain levels that cause the average person to crumble. Learning to tolerate pain, to push forward in spite of pain, and to keep a level head under the presence of pain is a gift that can’t be given or purchased, it has to be earned. It’s a talent the world’s most successful people have mastered and continue to perfect throughout life. It’s why high-achievers climb Mount Everest, compete in triathlons, and take on crazy challenges. It’s also why some people train in martial arts because the skills and lessons learned in combat easily translate to life and business. Successful people embrace pain as a tool to make themselves tougher than the people around them. Imagine what you could accomplish if you were just 10% tougher…
