Being Able to Endure Suffering is a Huge Advantage
Life throws sh*t at you, get good at dealing with it.
I challenge you to truthfully declare you have never had any kind of challenge thrown at you in life.
I don’t even need to personally know you, to know that you can’t do it. Regardless of who you are or where you are at in life, you are going to have things thrown at you that challenge you mentally, physically, and spiritually. Even as a young child when you got sick, that was surely a tough time for you (even if you don’t remember it).
However, what I am about to tell you may surprise you:
The human body adapts well when exposed to stress.
Additionally, there is something called the adaptation principle that in a nutshell says whatever stress you are exposed to, over time you will positively change to better endure this stress. The adaptation principle has been studied extensively over many years, if you want to go down that rabbit hole you can find more information about it here, here, and here.
This does not just apply to exercise, the mental benefits are boundless as well. I’d like to give you a framework of how you can better expose yourself to stress in manageable ways so you can move closer to mastery in any new skill you wish to learn, and live a happier life while you are at it.
If you don’t take anything else away from this article, take this:
Discipline leads to Action
Action leads to Habits
Habits lead to Mastery
The key ingredient for all of this to work though, is adequate time. It takes time to achieve a higher level of self-discipline, certain actions will take longer than others, it takes a minimum of 3 months to establish a new habit, and mastering a skill could take many years.
So, start small and work on building up your self discipline. The best way to do this is by taking bite sized steps every day to reinforce taking action when you do not want to. When we do things that we don’t want to a lot of times it is uncomfortable, and continuing to do things that are uncomfortable can be considered suffering. Anything that is not in your comfort zone and is challenging you falls under the umbrella of suffering.
You may be asking, how do I build self discipline? Good question.
The best way is to commit to doing tasks, and hold yourself to seeing them through to completion. Here are a few examples:
- It is late at night, you are tired after a long day and just want to go to bed, every fiber is screaming go to bed already please! However, there is a large pile of dishes staring you in the face. It would be easy to do them tomorrow, however if you force yourself to do them before bed then that gives you just a little bit more self-discipline.
- You are in the middle of a workout but you didn’t get good sleep last night or are hungry. It would be easy to call it a day and say you will make it up tomorrow, but to build more discipline you should finish your workout and maybe do a few minutes extra as well.
- You just get home from a long day at work where nothing seemed to go your way, and you have 2 choices. Either kick back on the couch and space out until you decide to go to bed, or spend 30–60 minutes working on a skill or business you are trying to build. You already know which one leads to more self-discipline, I don’t need to tell you.
The funny thing about doing things you don’t necessarily want to, is that you will always feel better when they are done, and they are not going to kill you.
In the scenarios above, doing what needs to get done is going to feel a lot harder than it needs to be no doubt. Mentally you are going to suffer because you would rather be doing something else, but you are forcing yourself to take action and do something that doesn’t “feel good”.
What you will find over time though, is that once you build the proper habits you no longer have to worry about not “feeling good”. All habits are done subconsciously and don’t require a ton of effort to carry them out. You should strive to ultimately develop the proper habits that will help you create the life you want to live. Mix in a little bit of patience since you know it takes time to master skills and before you know it your life will be completely different! If it doesn’t exactly work out how you want, well at least you have some good stories to tell.
I hope this helps you get a little more introspective into your behaviors and your life. The process for becoming or creating something great is simple but not easy. Take consistent action over time, force yourself to be uncomfortable, and over time discomfort actually becomes your friend because you know it gets you closer to where you need to be.
Do your best to build up self discipline by taking consistent actions regardless of how you are feeling, and your life will change over time. Become friends with suffering by exposing yourself to it and you will no doubt master your craft over time.
