No pain, no gain

Human beings are driven by the twin forces of pain and pleasure. The need to avoid pain is greater than the desire to seek pleasure in life. Have you ever felt disappointed, frustrated, rejected, and insulted by anyone or any situation in life? Then you can use the power of pain to turn things around for yourself. Pain is a signal to change something about your life!  

1. Injury pain: This pain is a result of physical injury and diseases or a significant emotional event like a relationship loss, business failure or loneliness. It is a signal to change things about yourself, so that the same event does not get repeated again in the future. 

2. Growth pain: This pain is experienced when we try to go beyond our comfort zone. It can be a physical comfort zone or an intellectual comfort one. Let us say you can currently run 3-5 kilometres or can do 20 push-ups every day easily. If you try to do more than what you think you can do, you will experience growth pains. Likewise, whatever money you are earning, try to increase more and you will experience some growth pains. This pain is your friend, so get comfortable with it. Your quality of life will improve in direct proportion to your ability to embrace the growth pains. 

3. Labour pain:  Every time you place someone’s need before your need, you will experience this pain. Bringing a new life into this world or taking care of your family and friends is a labour of love. This forms the foundation of the most trusted relationships — parents and child, family bonds, teacher and student equation, and deep friendships. We always love and respect people who have invested their time and resources in us. However, never remember the help you give to others. They may or may not feel grateful for your help but you must expect nothing from them. 

4. Useless pain: Avoid the pain that comes because of your own ill-informed choices like poor-quality friends, emotional drama, laziness and stubbornness to change. Never sacrifice what you want for something that does not add any value to your life. Chasing mindless entertainment, feelings of jealousy and harmful addictions will eventually give you a lot of pain. Be wise enough to not blame others for your situations. Learn to conquer your past failures rather than staying stuck. The pain caused by the emotions of guilt, fear, indecisions, self-doubt, jealousy and pessimism are useless.

Understand that pain creates progress in life. Then take highest quality actions!

(Siddhartha Sharma is the bestselling author of Love Your Mondays and retire young, 60 Keys to Success with NLP and many other books)