Why No Pain, No Gain?

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​Dear Why Team Member,

I hope this week’s message finds you well and enjoying your New Year.
This week we consider...

Why No Pain, No Gain?

​We are either improving or declining, growing or dying; if not literally, often emotionally and/or psychologically.

Showing up at the gym where No pain, No gain is most often heard, is the prime example.
And other than the obvious pain intentionally put onto the body to produce gains in strength, endurance and a number of life-enhancing chemicals; consider first and foremost the psychological pain necessary to establish an exercise discipline. Those who have trained for many years have long concluded that exercise is so life-giving, it is no longer optional:
Workout: Live! Don’t Workout: Die.

With so many pleasures literally at our fingertips, it has become all the more challenging to choose pain as we often aligning our lives to provide us with the most comfort at the least amount of effort. I have heard for years comments similar to this one:

“It must be nice, but for me, it comes at too high a price.”

Most people want to grow, but growth is change and change is rarely easy. Change can bring a deep subconscious reminder of death; the old dying to make way for the new.
For most of us, change means pain.

It is said that we will not choose the pain of change until we perceive that the pain of change will be less than the pain of staying where we are.
The operative word here is “perceive.” Many miss the benefits of change because they undervalue them. Why? Because many benefits from change cannot be fully quantified in advance of the change and certainly cannot be fully experienced until the change has been made.

It has all been explained scientifically by Newton: A body at rest will remain at rest unless a force acts upon it.

Are you comfortably numb?

Self-analyze: Are you so comfortably at rest that you have become numb to outside forces?
Nothing like a huge life change, usually a painful change, to rid yourself of numbness and empower you to feel again, to live again. But for many, this is rarely a choice made voluntarily.  Those going through a great change, often share how they have never felt more alive after giving up the fear of the change. While I’m not suggesting you make any radical changes in your life, I am inviting you to no longer fear them. When we awaken to the fact that only lies can die, who wouldn’t want to experience a life filled with more truth and thus more freedom?
Pain of change? Yes, Life is difficult, but the pain can be made less when we consider more the Gain; there is more aliveness in the midst of change, more connectedness with others and when you are more oriented to the gain, you are more likely willing to choose the pain.
For those who work out and train regularly, the emotional pain, necessary to establish the habit, has diminished over time as the value now far outweighs the cost.

Cost is only an issue in the absence of value.

For whatever it is that you would like to accomplish in this New Year, weigh not just the cost(the pain), but more-so the value(the gain). While many prefer the devil they know to the one they don’t, it’s often because they assume the devil they don’t know will be worse. The error is in the assumption; the devil they don’t know is likely not a devil at all - and has just become another rational lie to avoid the pain of change. Maybe this is what it truly means to rationalize.

Those who live: “better safe than sorry” often end up with a lot more sorry and a lot less safe.

Even in the moments when you think you miscalculated and the pain was greater than the gain, hang in there a little longer and look again, because there was the gain in self-confidence that you boldly said yes and didn’t run and hide. You grew more than you knew and learned more than you know.
“Fortune Favors the Bold”- Alexander the Great

This week, I am inviting you to live more fearlessly, embrace change more enthusiastically and thus live life more abundantly, for yourself - and as a living example - for others!

Make it a great week!

​Steve Luckenbach