I (Wholeheartedly) Wish You Pain and Suffering
Building resilience 1-repetition at a time
You know this guy. He’s all over the news. He’s everywhere on the internet.
For those of you wondering about who he is.
He is ‘The Jensen Huang’ CEO and President of Nvidia.
Isn’t that the company that makes GPUs for gaming and shit? Yes, they are.
But that was what they were known for earlier. Now, people know them (part of the reason why they’re on the news) because their processors power the entire AI ecosystem.
Nvidia is at the center powering the AI revolution that we are all witnessing right now, and as I’m writing this, Jensen just added 4 billion dollars to his net worth in a single day to give you a context of how valuable he is in retrospective to 2019 when he was just a CEO, and the AI wave was starting to build up.
The reason that I’m writing about him here is because of a clip of him that I saw the other day. He was on stage at Stanford, where he was asked by the interviewer, John Shoven.
“What advice would you give them to improve their chances of success in the real world?”
And to this, Jensen’s reply caught my eye.
“One of my biggest advantages is that I have low expectations.”
Now, that sounded nuts, coming from the CEO of a billion-dollar company doing groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence, which is powering many of the AI industry’s marquee tools, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot.
Jensen continues on to say that he believes “people with high expectations have very low resilience,” as he spoke to Stanford graduates at that point. He explains how every Stanford/Ivy-league type that he has met so far has always fit into the high expectations bracket, and most of them have very little resilience.
Thinking about what he said, I believe there is a lot of truth to it. A high performer, say an ivy-leaguer in this context, carries many expectations on their shoulders.
They’re expected by society and their peers to always perform at the highest level, and they are always conditioned on a training set of repetitive success. Even though this puts them on overdrive for the entirety of their education and helps them get their shiny plaques, it gives them a false shield of invincibility once they join the corporate giants and the tech titans.
At the first sight of failure, they falter and break down. They start self-sabotaging, and their grit takes a hit as the imposter syndrome kicks in. Having high expectations, especially when we are expecting an outcome that’s out of our field of control, weakens resilience.
In those moments, our capacity to manage suffering daily is handy to smile through all of it and return the next day to keep hammering at it.
High achievers, high expectations, low resilience
I was watching the TV show “Young Sheldon” the other day and saw something in a similar line. The show is about Sheldon Cooper, who is (spoiler alert) a Physics prodigy who excelled his way out of high school at a very young age and went on to attend East Texas Tech, where he graduated at the age of 14.
While in college, Sheldon had a new civil engineering teacher at the university, who was everything Sheldon adored as an academician when he first met him.
In an attempt to win over the professor, Sheldon tries hard to become the new professor’s pet, just like he is with the others at the university. The professor, who is also an ex-army man, was rough around the edges in his approach to students and had a no-BS policy regarding class favorites.
When given a class assignment to design a bridge, Sheldon quickly gets it done, expecting the professor’s pat on the back. But the professor glances over the paper and returns it back to Sheldon, saying, “Get it done again. It’s wrong.” The boy is taken aback as this experience of rejection is something new to him.
The feedback throws him off balance; he tries to argue with the professor, explaining how he’s right. The guy takes the assignment sheet off the table and tears it down into two, giving out a clear statement of authority.
Sheldon being the pain in the ass that he is starts to spam designs left and right, the coming week trying hard to impress the professor, but it simply doesn’t work with him.
The paper gets torn, or the assignment is rejected every single time. For someone having high expectations about himself, Sheldon gets torn apart every time this happens. His resilience wears thin, and he finally gives up and gets his parents and the dean to talk to the professor. But the professor doesn’t budge a bit.
This episode captures the classic case of someone with high expectations. Especially in the engineering field, when you’re working on problems of magnitude such as that of the ones Nvidia or any leading tech company in the space is dealing with, you’ll have to make resilience your best friend.
In business, for instance, there are times when you’ll have to put yourselves out there and accept rejection with your head held high. When you pitch that offer, do a cold outreach, handle that sales call, or post content online that gets zero engagement week after week. It tests your resilience and, more importantly, your character.
When repeated failure is an indication to quit
I’m not advertising that failure is a wrong indicator. Most of the time, failure is necessary to nudge you in the right direction or to reset and realign your compass. But sometimes, it might accurately indicate your incompetence or unsuitability to get the job done.
But how do you know that? Especially when you’re trying to be more resilient.
In business, if you’re doing something that people have paid you for in the past or something that you genuinely find happiness in doing, failure means you are doing something wrong. Maybe the service delivery wasn’t on point this time, or the product you brought out to the market, or the strategy you implemented wasn’t exactly the best.
Whatever it is. It’s best to get on it and iterate until you fix the issue.
But what if it’s a skill issue? Maybe you’re a terrible writer. Maybe you aren’t good with people, and sales might not be your cup of tea. Or you might be better working at a 9–5 rather than navigating the uncertainties as an entrepreneur?
These things can happen, you know.
It is at times like this you must develop the necessary self-awareness to know that you’re in the wrong here and things are simply not working out. It’s like being on a sinking ship. If you’re trying to put duct tape on the leak and stop the ship from sinking, you’ll keep trying to fix something that isn’t in your control.
In that case, get a life jacket and jump off the frickin ship.
Greatness is built on iterations of suck.
Nobody taught us to deal with failure while growing up; we pick this skill up while growing up. I believe we are lucky if we find ourselves in situations promising us pain and suffering because greatness is at the other end of it.
We progressively overload the next set of weights, hoping to push through the suffering the weights offer us. The next rep gets easier with the same weights we lift. Your body develops muscles that help you push through it the next time. It applies to the mind, too.
Greatness is built on iterations of suck.
The faster you fail, the better you will become on the next iteration. At every roadblock you face, you must exercise your self-awareness and think through it.
Is this something I believe I can solve?
Is this way above my skill level? If that is the case, how much upskilling do I have to do to get this done? Can I get it done before the deadline? Is the deadline even realistic? Am I being gaslighted to work on an unrealistic deadline? Am I in the right here, or is this guy being an asshole?
Stop what you’re doing and check in with yourself.
All these are questions you should ask yourself before your next iteration. Once you do that at the end of every failed attempt. Tuck your tail between your legs and work on it again. Repeat until you triumph over it, as your resilience shields you from negative self-talk.
One rep at a time, one day at a time, is how you build resilience. It’s the only way. Building resilience sucks, especially if you’re anxious and there is a lot of uncertainty to deal with.
As long as you embrace the suck and keep grinding at problem-solving, nothing else should matter to you. That’s the only way you grow. You bury your expectations and keep at your reps.
Be assured that you will suffer. That is a guarantee. It’s how you process your suffering and channel it to leveling you up that matters.
Coming back to Jensen Huang, he talks about how Resilience matters in success, and there is no way that I can teach it to you than to wish that:
“Suffering happens to you.”
When I first heard those words, “I wish you suffering,” I felt so understood. We all have been through different kinds of suffering and still suffer. Buddha preached that “Life is suffering,” and it is the only constant. Except for the days you enjoy spending on the couch drinking tea and the times when you spend time with your family, friends, and kids, most days suck, and you’ll have to shoulder that weight and do some squats if you can.
Rather than having a bleak outlook towards suffering, I say let us be grateful for the suffering; it will mold you into something stronger; as a man or woman, your ability to endure suffering is the biggest predictor of success in your life.
Jensen explains how fortunate he was to have plenty of opportunities for setbacks and suffering growing up and his practice of using the phrases “Pain & Suffering” with glee inside of Nvidia. In doing so, he claims that he can refine the character of his company. A company with resilient employees is a company that has character.
Jensen believes that greatness sprouts not from intelligence but from character. Greatness comes not from smart people but from people who choose to suffer, people with an unbreakable character. In closing his interview, he wished all of the Stanford graduates ample doses of “Pain & Suffering.”
What an absurd way to end an interview (and this article).
“I wholeheartedly wish you pain and suffering.”
