Scheduling The 3 Pains

“There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times to develop psychic muscles.” – Muad’Dib from Frank Herbert’s Dune

After finishing a workshop in Sydney an attendee shared his “personal mission deck”.
This was a presentation detailing his mission, his values and his projects.
He titled a slide “What pain do I choose?” and listed things like:

-Solving frustratingly hard problems
-Seeming slightly crazy to others
-Not having a lot of money

The next slide read: “Pain is part of the process. Sustain the pain.”

The rest of the deck could be accused of wishful aspirations…

…but who could deny the pains sounded real?

THE BENEFITS OF PAIN

“Remember this: the pain is all in your head. If you want to evolve, you need to go where the problems and the pain are. By confronting the pain, you will see more clearly the paradoxes and problems you face. Reflecting on them and resolving them will give you wisdom.” – Ray Dhalio

I’ve been  surprised to see a benefit of embracing pain that has nothing to do with self improvement. In fact, it is more in the camp of making the self less important.

Simply put: you suffer less.

By coming to expect the pain, you don’t feel nearly as much aversion towards it. Instead of anxiety or worry of the upcoming difficult email you have to write… you feel less. Not because you become numb, but because you don’t create agitation in the first place. The dread of an undesirable action contains most of its suffering. Postponing it only stretches this unhappiness.

For example, instead of getting tense if taking a cold shower, you observe the physiological sensations, with genuine curiosity for the flurry of contraction that automatically takes place… relaxing into it. The more times you repeat this counterintuitive non-reactiveness, the less uncomfortable the experience becomes. If you feel the pain during the event without reacting to it, you lessen the aversion to futures instances.

Tension is reaction. Relaxation is non-reaction.

When feeling pain, both tension and relaxation demand focus, but the former multiplies the suffering.

THE THREE UNIVERSAL PAINS

It seems there are certain areas that all of us humans need to face on a daily basis.
Every day I schedule time to face discomfort in three ways:

• Mental
• Physical
• Emotional

Mental in the morning in the form of breathing meditation to develop concentration, mindfulness meditation to develop equanimity to bodily sensations, and knowledge work that requires problem solving.

Physical at midday in the form of endurance (running) strength (weights) and flexibility (yoga). These are ridiculously small periods of 10, 7 and 3 minutes respectively. But this consciously chosen pain leads to more energy the rest of the day.

Emotional in the afternoon in the form of sleepiness, low energy and having to deal with interpersonal relationships. This one is the hardest because the battery is no longer full.

In the short term these pains seems irrelevant… but they compound fast if done every day. Just two weeks of following the above routines brings a baseline of sharpness, vitality and equanimity that allow me to face the day effectively.

POSTPONING PAIN

By having designated times in the day when I am primed for facing specific kinds of pain, I get the luxury of delaying pain and feeling OK about it.

Tired to go up the stairs? It’s ok, I did my physical work in the gym.

Don’t feel like researching flights in the evening? No problem, tomorrow morning I’ll be fresh.

Not in the mood to talk in the morning? No guilt, but I’ll have to in the evening.

Since almost every day there is a chunk of time devoted to mental, physical and emotional training, I don’t have the pressure of feeling I am supposed to be constantly stretching (that insidious hidden voice of self judgement we don’t quite know where it comes from). I’ll stretch later. At its alloted time. But now let me take that taxi ride.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

-What pains do I choose in my journey?

-Which pains do I schedule daily as training?

-What pain am I postponing that is causing me more suffering that the actual doing?

Consider using this personal mission deck to list your pains which I adapted to include daily pains.