What Is Your Capacity for Pain?

Pain. Oh, what a feeling. It hurts. It sucks. It's the very thing you want to avoid. Whether it's financial, emotional, or physical. Where pain lies, you're often running in the other direction, or at least you'd like to.

Pain, outside of love, might be the strongest force in the world. But heck, even love is a synonym for pain at times. The force of pain is like the strength of one-hundred-miles-an-hour winds. If you're not ready for it, not willing to embrace it, you can say bye-bye to any of your aspirations. Because of all the characteristics that make up the elite of the elite--the one of ones--there is nothing more true than what the founder of Four Seasons, Isadore Sharp, said

Excellence is the capacity to take pain.

Nothing is further from the truth, unfortunately. Just as death is a fee for being human, pain, suffering, struggling, hurting--whatever you want to call it--is the natural consequence of chasing your wildest ambitions.

Want to start a business? Awesome. Are you ready to go through an emotional and financial rollercoaster?

Want to become a professional athlete? Love it. Can you put your body through the grinder?

Want to change the world? Do it. But do you have the capacity to endure criticism, ridicule, and hatred from the world?

When Elon Musk was in the early years of SpaceX and Tesla, everything was going wrong. Tesla's first model, The Roadster, needed to be scratched and started over, and SpaceX was undergoing failed launch after failed launch. Burning through half of $200 million, every dollar he spent was like throwing it into a black hole. Not necessarily ideal for any type of business. Everyone was urging him to focus on one company. Both were struggling. Both were about to crash. The only way to succeed was to see one of his babies die. All Elon said,

I will spend my last dollar on these companies. If we have to move to Justine’s parents’ basement, we’ll do it.

Talk about capacity for pain. Are you willing to lose it all financially? Not even to succeed, but just for the chance to succeed.

And it's not just about pain today, but enduring it forever. Not just a moment, but all moments. When Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay at the time) was set to face the hard-hitting champ, Sonny Liston, no one was giving him a chance. It wasn't a matter of if Liston would win, but how fast. One round? Maybe. Two rounds? Probably. Three rounds? Certainly it would be over by then. With all the noise, Ali's mindset was simple: win or die trying,

Maybe I can be beat. I doubt it. But the man is going to have to knock me down and then I’ll get up and he’ll have to knock me down again and I’ll get up and he’ll have to knock me down and I’ll still get up. I’ve worked too hard and too long to get this chance. I’m gonna have to be killed before I lose, and I ain't going to die easily.

Pain is the key between the life you are living and the life you want to live. But it's not about dealing with it for a few days or months--taking some jabs and hooks to the chin--is your ability and capacity to deal with it forever. Pain is the secret that there's for the taking.

So the question is, how do you increase your capacity for pain?

I'm sure there are many things you can do. If you follow the mantra of Eleanor Roosevelt and do the things you think you cannot do, I'm sure your pain muscle will get stronger. Or if you inflict actual pain on yourself--working out, taking a cold shower, taking a financial risk--there's no doubt that you'd increase the muscle.

But the best way to increase your capacity for pain is to use a different type of pain.

When Nims Purja set out to climb the fourteen highest peaks in the world in just seven months (the previous record was seven years), he knew the pain that would ensue. The physical pain of limited oxygen, heavy lungs, and burning legs. The emotional pain of potentially never seeing his family again. Even the financial pain, as he remortgaged his house to fund the trip, and any failure would burden him and those he loved. I don't know about you, but that's a pain and a half to deal with.

What Nims Purja would do is use long-term pain--the feeling of regret or the idea of quitting--as a tool.

My biggest concern throughout the mission was not finishing, either through weakness or dying. So I used the potential consequences of failure as a way of not quitting. I pictured the disappointed people who had once looked to my project for inspiration, or the joking doubters who could inevitably make comments in interviews and call me out online. Imagining their faces fired me up. Most of all, it felt important that I complete the 14 expeditions in one piece.

I saw myself a year down the line, fuming at my inability to pull through at the end. I thought of the people who had put their faith in me, the friends I had made along the way.

When you close your eyes and imagine the pain of others you will let down, the feeling of regret if you quit, or the joy that will radiate throughout your body when you get there, it helps you overcome the present struggle. The key is finding the tool that works time and time again. Because it's never going to be about winning once, or twice, but forever.

If you love it enough, if the thing you're chasing matters that much to you, then you might not have to deal with using any methods or techniques. The pain is just a part of the fee of chasing a dream.

If the pain feels like a burden, if it's not something you want to go through or you're willing to go through, it just might not mean enough to you. And there's no need to go through pain for something that doesn't mean the world to you.

It's about what Jerry Seinfeld said,

The blessing in life is when you find the torture you are comfortable with.

If you want to increase your capacity for pain, find the pain that you love, or that you're at least comfortable with, and every now and then, close your eyes so you can keep your eyes on the prize.

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