Ep #20: Choose Your Pain to Determine Your Results

Hello, welcome, welcome, welcome. This week’s episode, I’ve been waiting for exactly this specific moment. Because I don’t feel like talking to any of you right now, at all. I have a little bit of an allergy thing going on, took a nap earlier, kind of want to go back and take a nap, but this was on my schedule. It says “record weekly podcast,” and it’s on my calendar and so this is the perfect time to talk to you about something that I know that you feel as well, that you have felt many times in your life, and—here’s the key—that you will continue to feel until you are dead. And that is: do you want to choose what kind of pain you have in order to get the results that you want?

Here’s what I mean by that. Would you like the pain of discipline or would you like the pain of regret? Because you only get to choose one either way. Here’s the key: you will feel pain. We are all human. In our personal lives and our business lives, there will be things we need to overcome. There will be pain and a lot of times that pain resides in our own brain. It’s psychological. It’s the pain of us resisting what we know we need to do in order to get results in our business, to get the results that we want in our life. And it has to do with the fact that our brains had the best of intentions when we started the week and we put on our calendar that we were going to do this thing but in the moment right before it’s supposed to happen, our brains—which this is perfectly normal—don’t want to do it because dopamine. It would be more fun to do something else than this thing on the calendar. It would be more fun to go for a walk, it would be more fun to watch that Netflix show, it would be more fun to take a nap like in my case but there are results that I want to get in my business and in my personal life and I know that I will be choosing the pain of regret if I choose to go take that nap right now. It will feel good for a short period of time in the moment but I won’t have the result that I want, which is the promise I made to myself that I was going to get on here weekly and I was going to help you with something that helped you in your personal life, and that helped you with your business goals, your life and your business goals and the stories that we tell ourselves in order to get those things that we want and to move on, move towards the things that we want for our future selves or to choose the story that keeps us stuck, the story that is an excuse, the story that has really great reasons and rationalizations why you didn’t get your shit done and now you don’t have the results that you want in your business or they’re at least delayed, they could have happened faster, or in your personal life. 

So that’s what we’re talking about. The pain of discipline or the pain of regret. Now, in both of these instances with pain, there’s something that is going to happen either way and that is that resistance. It’s that dread, the dread of what of doing something right now that you don’t want to do. Now, here’s an example for personal. Let’s say that you have made goals for yourself to go to the gym. You want to build five pounds of muscle and you have given yourself 90 days to do it. And you have a specific plan that you’re supposed to do daily in order to do it, and nutrition in order support it so those muscles can grow. Now, your brain knows that you want that result for your future self and so in order to get it, you are choosing that specific pain of discipline because that’s something you want in your life and remember, as humans, we don’t get to, to not have pain. The key is to pick things that you’re excited about, the pain that you choose, in order to get the growth that you want. Because with growth, a lot of times that that is going to be pain, right? Do you remember growing pains as a kid? Yeah, you grew but it doesn’t, it doesn’t always feel good. I remember the shooting pains in my legs with as I was growing up. So we’re choosing one pain over the other. There will always be dread. So if my choice is that I either can find a way to get out of the thing that I know I’m supposed to do to record my podcast, to send that sales email, to go to the gym. I can come up with lots of excuses. My brain is extremely clever, and so is yours. You will find all kinds of rationalizations why you can put it off or do it later or not at all. But it’s on your calendar, and you said you wanted to do it, so if we know that dread is going to happen anyway, let’s plan for it. 

There’s nothing wrong with you that you don’t feel like doing that thing right now for your personal life or for your business. You don’t need to beat yourself up about it, it’s perfectly normal that your brain wants to do the quickest and easiest path to pleasure right now because that is the way our brains are hardwired, to seek the easiest, fastest route to dopamine, the quickest hit for pleasure. But your forebrain knows that you want that result. Dread is going to be there either way, but here’s the fun thing: that dread goes away faster if you just start. If you just turn on your podcasting equipment, if you open up your script and look at what you were going to do and what stories you want to tell and how you want to help your audience, your brain starts to like that and starts to find ways of problem solving and doing it. And then, all of a sudden, your mic is on, you’re recording, or you’re already written the subject line of that sales email you want to send out to your client, or you’ve picked up the phone and you’ve called that client about something you thought about for them. You’ve started and that dread is already starting to dissipate out of your brain because you’ve gotten started. 

Now, conversely, if you choose the pain of regret instead of the pain of discipline, that lasts for a really fucking long time, doesn’t it? Oh my gosh, the pain of regret. That’s the stuff that you lay awake at night and go “Man, why didn’t I get that done? The rest of my day doesn’t feel good now because of the fact that I know I didn’t do that thing and so my pleasure for the rest of my day is diminished because of the fact that I decided not to do the thing I knew I needed to do in order to move forward.” So that dread and that resistance would already be over if you’ve just chosen to do it. The pain of discipline is shorter than the pain of regret. In the moment, it seems so easy to go ahead and choose the path of regret, but it’s sneaky. Like I said, that dread will go away faster if you choose to pick the pain of discipline over the pain of regret. Using that example of going to the gym, you will have muscles built if you follow that nutrition plan and you eat that protein, and your muscles grow slowly, day over day over day over day, but if you choose that pain of regret multiple times per week, you’re not going to see those results with that, which then starts to cause a feedback loop of you not seeing results and you feeling like it’s not working, which reinforces your brain to be able to rationalize, “Hey, let’s just not do this. Let’s choose the pain of regret because there’s nothing happening.” So it’s a compound effect. Each time that you choose the pain of regret over the pain of discipline, it’s like you’re creating your own evidence for why you’re not getting what you want and then you just throw up your hands and you give up. That’s why people go on diet after diet after diet. It’s why they stop training weights just a few weeks in. It’s why they don’t go ahead and do their sales emails or think about that marketing strategy that they needed to implement or write that story or record that podcast because it’s so easy not to do it that one time. But then it becomes easier and easier not to become and each and every time afterwards for you to do it. So, you starting to see the pattern here? Either way there’s dread. There are going to be things on your calendar. They’re going to be things that you know that actually you chose to do with the time but when it comes to the moment of doing it, it’s perfectly normal that your brain wants to pick something more fun and immediate right now. Totally fine. But if you do it anyway, and you get through that short period of pain that dread, and you just take that first step, that first couple minutes of doing that activity, that dread dissipates and goes away and then you get to feel accomplished.

So tell your brain this: you will actually start feeling accomplished a lot faster if you just get over this momentary dread. If you choose the pain of discipline and get over the momentary dread, the pleasure of accomplishment will actually happen right after you’re done, or sometimes even during the activity that you’re doing. So these are some ways that you can start to rewire your brain when it wants quick, easy pleasure, especially the kind that might keep you off track. So “Hey, brain. I know that you want some dopamine right now. You’re working perfectly fine, thank you so much. However, I know that we’re experiencing dread right now and nothing’s going wrong. Let’s start just for five minutes on this activity and see where we get and then brain, I think we’re going to start feeling a little bit accomplished and we like that feeling, right? We like that hit of dopamine. And then we’ll just keep going a little bit more in a little bit more and a little bit more until the task is done. And then we get to feel accomplishment and then we get to have what comes afterwards: the reward, guilt free.” The rest of our day feels amazing because we went to the gym, we picked up the weights. We get to have that endorphin rush. We know with our rational minds that we are making progress towards the goal that we want, we know that podcast has been recorded now and that your audience is starting to get that message and that they’re starting to get the things that you want to serve them with because you got over the temporary pain of discipline, that slight moment of dread, where it was so tempting to do something else. But now you get to feel accomplished, and you get to move towards your first future self. 

So that’s what I have for you this week. This is something I have as a screensaver on my phone right now. So I look at it constantly because I know that my brain is functioning normally. And after I’m done with this podcast, and I have other things I need to do with my day. I know also there are going to be some things on that list that I don’t want to do that in the moment. It would be so much more fun to do something else. But I always have the choice. In my personal and in my business life, if I want both of those areas to grow. I know dread is going to be there in some way a lot of times. But if I choose the pain of discipline over the pain of regret, because I only get to choose one. With one I’m going towards the future self and the evolution that I want, with the business goals that I want, the way that I want to show up in the world that I want to model for my kids. And the other one is the exact opposite. That’s what leads to beating myself up, to thinking that I’m not doing it right. Throwing my hands up and starting to feel like a victim or so many things are down that path that I don’t want and I know that you don’t want either. So as you go through your week, this week, then you have those things on your calendar that you’re thinking “Man, I really don’t want to do. It’d be so much easier to do XYZ,” really think about your future self and if they are going to appreciate that you had the bravery as a hero, on your story and on your journey, to choose the pain of discipline in this instance over the pain of regret. 

Have a wonderful week, my friends, I’ll talk to you next time. 

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Thanks for listening to Storied Life Coaching with Aaron J. Jacobs. If you want more information or resources from the podcast, visit us at storiedcoaching.com.