I Love Pain

I spent a good part of this afternoon reading Phil Stutz’ The Tools. You may not have heard of Phil Stutz, but he is probably the most accomplished psychologist alive, much like Scott Peck was in the 1980s. I was turned onto Stutz two years ago, but I still haven’t watched his Netflix series, though I will soon, right after football is over.

The first of the tools is called “Reversal of Desire,” and it is basically for people who can’t get out of their own way, which is practically everyone. It goes something like this. There is something you want. But you will have to go through a lot of pain to get it. Since most people avoid pain, you instead choose to spend time within your comfort zone, which sounds fine, except if you spend your entire life within your comfort zone, you won’t have accomplished anything, and you will have crippling regret. Again, this is practically everyone.

Stutz says that the solution to this is to run headfirst into the pain. He actually suggests you say to yourself, “I love pain,” and then go do the hard thing. I have written about doing hard things before. So you run headfirst into the pain, without a helmet, you do the hard thing, and a whole new world opens up to you.

It will not come as a surprise to you that I like Stutz and I like this idea of getting outside your comfort zone and I also like this idea of running headfirst into pain. Now, the most famous person who loves pain is David Goggins. It’s not that David Goggins doesn’t feel pain, it’s that he actually likes it. He takes it to an extreme—he’s borderline masochistic. But he is a model of the idea that you can do pretty much anything if you put your mind to it, which resonates with a lot of people. But since I don’t see 5 million David Gogginses running around, I am guessing that most people decided it was too hard and went back to eating Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips.

So when you think about people who love pain, the first people who come time mind are naturally the elite athletes. The long-distance runners, the swimmers, the gymnasts, the weightlifters, the MMA fighters, etc. If you are stepping into the octagon, you have gone through a lot of pain to get where you are, and you are probably going to be in a lot of pain after that fight. You are doing something that not a lot of people are willing to do, and that’s great! One thing I’ve found about the athletes, though, is that they look down on non-athletes for being unwilling to go through that kind of pain. Correspondingly, non-athletes treat elite athletes with a reverence that is probably unwarranted, as physical pain is not the only kind of pain out there. There is also psychic pain, otherwise known as mental pain or emotional pain, and sometimes, all three. But an athlete will look at a fat person and say, that guy is a pussy, without realizing that Mr. Fat Guy is one of the leading mathematicians in the world. Or is a legendary trader, or a world-famous musician, or has a phone number in his bank account. No, we place physical pain on a higher plane than psychic pain, because it is visible.

It's funny—I’m not in the best physical shape, and sometimes people make assumptions about me that I am weak or lazy. Being weak or lazy would imply that I have a desire to be in shape, but that I refuse to endure the pain. In that case, I would be weak or lazy. The reality is that at one point in my life, I actually was an elite athlete, and my attitude is been there, done that, and I’d prefer to spend that time doing something else, like writing books. An athlete could not do what I do (write books). The funny thing is that Goggins wrote a book and it was so goddamned poorly written that his editor just threw up his hands and published it as is, and the voice was so compelling that it became a bestseller. But in general, most athletes aren’t willing to go through the psychic pain it takes to write a book, and I’m not just talking about the writing part. I’m talking about querying 300 agents, spending 8 months on a proposal, getting turned down by 25 different publishers, going through a brutal editing process, and then hustling up 100 different podcasts when it is released. No, that process is painful. I’m not saying it’s superior to physical pain, but I’m certainly not saying that physical pain is superior to psychic pain. They are pari passu. Don’t assume that someone else’s life is easy because they can’t do 5 sets of 47 push-ups.

For example, everyone thinks that actors have it good. Oh really? Have you ever been in an audition? Have you ever been in a situation where how you perform for 120 seconds is going to determine the trajectory of the rest of your life? And, by the way, you are in competition with 500 other people? You want to talk about pressure? You want to talk about pain? The last six months of rehearsing comes down to two minutes? I don’t think so.

But really what we are talking about here is the athlete who won’t put in the extra effort, the writer who doomscrolls instead of writing, and the actor who bails on auditions because of the pressure. The people who aren’t getting what they want out of their lives because they are living in their comfort zone. And within the comfort zone are opiates—not actual opiates, mind you, but mind-numbing habits like weed, booze, social media, TV, and porn, all of which can be a psychological crutch, an excuse to not go through the pain we need to learn and grow. So even one minute spent on any of these things will move your further away from your goal. You’re either moving towards your goal, or away from your goal. If I am being honest, I spend a little bit too much time on social media. I have to use Twitter a little bit for my job, but I don’t need to spend a half hour scrolling to the bottom of Facebook where all the boner pill ads live. I spent about 3 hours writing my novel today. I also spent about an hour on social media. Shame on me. I will say that writing the novel is painful much in the way that lifting weights in painful. Not fun while you’re doing it, but you feel great afterwards.

Aside from the opiates, a lot of the reason that people don’t run headfirst into the pain is because it is scary. They have fear. Usually fear of rejection. I am one of the lucky microscopic few who never had to query an agent, but I know plenty of people who have. 80% of the time, you never get a response. 19% of the time, you get a terse, one-sentence email. .99% of the time, you might get some helpful feedback. And .01% of the time, you sign a deal. Of course, we all go through this, right? The kids in college trying to land investment banking internships are doing the same thing, sending out 3,000 cold emails or LinkedIn messages. You have to have zero fear of rejection. Talk to anyone in sales—same thing. I will tell you a story. When I published All the Evil of This World, I had 100 galleys printed, and I started DMing people on Twitter to help me promote the book. Practically no one responded. One person actually made fun of my pitch in a tweet. Kept going. Got no help from anyone. The book ended up being a cult favorite, and is one of my proudest achievements. Also: you are not in charge of what other people think of you. People will have negative feelings about you, and that’s ok. You can’t control other people—you can only control you.

Maybe you decide to take my advice and run headfirst into the pain, yelling I LOVE PAIN, and you do the thing and it is a failure. Well, it doesn’t guarantee success. I have failed at a whole bunch of things over the years, and I’m failing at stuff as I write. When you take on a challenge, there are only two outcomes: it succeeds, or you learn something. Both of those are excellent outcomes. After 20 years of failure, I am one smart motherfucker. And success is often a matter of perspective. I sold 2,250 copies of my short story collection, Night Moves. That book was my baby. Now, 2,250 copies doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is when you consider that the average short story collection sells about 500. I am guessing that The Best American Short Stories series sells about 4,000-5,000. So I feel pretty good about it. And even if I only sold one copy to my mom, I would still be proud of it.

So. The short version of this:

· Get out of your comfort zone

· Run headfirst into the pain

· Win

The one thing unsuccessful people have in common? They don’t love pain.

Back to the novel tomorrow.