Time has softened our race. Spoilt by luxuries, incapacitated by comforts, our threshold for pain has diminished considerably. Gone are the days of hard work and resilience, the modern era is all about quitting too soon and taking the shortest route. Your fear of getting hurt overrules all your dreams and aspirations. Pain is what you want to avoid at all cost, be it physical or psychological. And when the going gets tough, you surrender.

Pain, as uncomfortable it might be, is an essential precursor to growth. If you endure it, you become eligible for all the pleasures life has in store for you, if you surrender, you are devoid of all these joys.

Surrendering as a Habit

When you surrender you not only lose immediately but leave a gateway for yourself to surrender when pain comes your way again. If you come across extremities again, your conditioned mind recalls its previous disposition towards pain and knows that it can choose to quit, and it most definitely does.

Surprisingly you are conditioned to surrender since childhood. Excessive paternal love gets you everything without much of an effort. A child knows that his gateway to the pleasures of life is through crocodile tears. So he never attempts to make an effort and resorts to crying at every possible obstacle he faces. This becomes an acquired characteristic. Although its odd seeing a grown up cry but his molded instincts don’t allow him to push beyond his limited scope. The scope which was defined in his childhood.

The absurdities of pain 

You might try to run from it, but pain will catch you in one way or the other. So why delay suffering for a later day? Why lead a life of fear? Why not understand the varied forms of pain and not surrender to them?

Here are the absurd forms that pain takes up:

1. Pain in the form of mental stress and fatigue– Mental pain comes in the form of stress. Focusing on a particular task for too long puts you under a lot of stress and leads to cognitive fatigue. The ones who surrender to this mental stress end up with normal lives, the ones who endure are the ones who become great eventually.

2. Pain while pursuing healthy ambitions– While working on your fitness goals you face both mental and physical pain. If you manage to overcome both consistently, you surpass your expectations. Usually you don’t go beyond the threshold of pain and workout within your comfort zone. Obviously you see negligible results, and seeing this you quit.This is why all fitness plans which don’t involve progressive overload( doing better than what you did yesterday) fail. Pain should be well accepted if you want any kind of improvement in your health.

3. Pain that comes from resisting temptation- Sacrificing superficial pleasures, like watching tv, junk food, smoking, drinking and social media takes a lot of effort and will power. A condition where you have to force yourself away from the things you like. This is associated with a mental pain. We know excessive indulgences are harmful for us but we surrender to the pain that we feel when we let them go. Hence all our promises and resolutions go to waste.

4. Pain arising from social discomfort– What people say can really hurt you and make you change your views about life. But if you surrender to the pain they which comes out of social skepticism, you will never be able to accomplish what you are meant to. If you are willing to bare all the pain and abuse which the critics throw your way, and still follow the path you have chosen, you are bound for glory.

Why not fight the demon today than give it time to get big on you?

Remember, you are not defeated until you surrender, you stand an equal chance until you quit. How you respond to pain determines how far you can push yourself, how far you push yourself defines how great you become.

You just need to control the remote of your life and mute the voices in your head telling you to take the easier path. You need to channel your thoughts and be resilient at the most testing of times. If you manage to control pain and learn to live with it, you might lose a battle or two, but never be defeated.

This is not a one time fight but it will last you a life time, you better be prepared to fight back every time pain strikes, and try to kill pain before it kills you.

Have a good day.