Suck it Up, Buttercup!

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I know it’s meant as a compliment, but it irks me when someone says, “You’re lucky to have a high pain tolerance.”

They usually follow it up with a story about their own natural, even genetic, low pain tolerance.

I’ve spent decades learning and practicing to become more tolerant of discomfort and pain. Professionally, it’s what I help my clients do, as well. I’m not any more genetically gifted or divinely ordained than the next person who takes two Advils at the slightest sign of discomfort.

But, years ago,  I learned a life lesson that changed everything.

I learned that every single behavior I needed to manage to live life more fully lay on the other side of my ability to manage pain. I learned that time management, health management, and money management, to name a few, are all pain management.

I understood and accepted that the various distractions that took me off the course of my desired life goals occurred because my tolerance for discomfort (aka pain) was embarrassingly low to non-existent.

Since childhood, I had practiced finding the path of least resistance. Instead of aiming to increase my pain and discomfort tolerance, I took whatever shortcut reduced or alleviated those transient but undesired feelings.

The shortcut of spending money reduced the pain of feeling lacking or not good enough. Canceling events reduced the pain of social anxiety and feeling not good enough. Procrastination reduced the pain of perfectionism and, you guessed it, feeling not good enough. Overeating temporarily numbed the pain of sadness and every other difficult emotion. Texting and emailing reduced the pain of rejection.

If you recognize living with one or more patterns I’ve mentioned above, I hope you realize you don’t have a time, diet, or money management problem. You, like I did, have a pain management problem. You are not willing to expand your emotional and mental pain tolerance to achieve your long-term life goals.

When a client comes to me struggling with overspending, it might seem logical to jump straight into creating a budget and holding her/him accountable to it. But that approach—often the go-to for many coaches—should actually be the last step, not the first. Starting with budgeting, though it appears practical, can sometimes serve as a way to avoid facing the underlying emotion driving the behavior. If that core feeling goes unaddressed because it's too painful to confront, any budgeting plan is likely to fall short in the long run.

My physical pain tolerance increased exponentially when I started addressing my emotional pain tolerance. Only when I expanded my capacity to be with (literally just be, not get rid of) difficult emotions like sadness, regret, shame, guilt, anxiety, and worry was I able to develop myself into an endurance athlete. And any endurance athlete will tell you that pain is a feature, not a bug, of the sport.

I was born with a “normal” level of pain tolerance, whatever that means. I firmly believe that we all start from the same level of tolerance and capacity—the practices we see modeled around us as children are often those we pick up and master. One day, we look at our adult selves and proclaim that we were born that way.

But this is not true.

If you want to change your ability, capacity, and tolerance for any emotion, you can. But be careful. Here, I’m talking about expanding your capacity for discomfort, not your capacity to tolerate negative people and circumstances. This is a crucial difference to understand and practice.

We should be able to tolerate temporary pain and discomfort in service of our higher goals and desires. But tolerating toxic people and situations only makes us physically, emotionally, and mentally less capable in the long run.

Know the difference. And only then can you consciously grow one practice while removing the other entirely.