Choose Your Pain

Choose Your Pain

“Growth is painful.
Change is painful.
Yet nothing is as painful as staying stuck Somewhere that you don’t belong.”
–Author Unknown

In this life, there will be pain.  Some of that pain will be unavoidable.  The loss of loved ones, tragic accidents and unforeseeable disasters are just part of living.  Other pain will be optional.  Being honest helps us to prevent the shame of being caught in a lie.  Acting in a timely manner helps to evade the pain of regret. Living a sedentary lifestyle avoids many physical pains, at least in the short term.  However, many life decisions carry pain on both sides.  Avoiding relationships can avert the pain of rejection but it can lead to the ache of loneliness and solitude.

So in reality, life is careful balance between the pursuit of pleasures and the avoidance of pains.  It is in pursuing this balance that we can fall into grave errors.  Too often, many of us avoid short term discomfort and thereby forego long term benefits.  Growth and change are positive actions that grant long term benefits.  However, growth and change usually involve some painful and unpleasant situations.  Looking back on honestly on our failures, mistakes and errors in order to understand them and learn from them is a very humbling and uneasy process.  However, failure to perform such reflection on our actions results in our suffering the repetition of these same behaviours an incurring the same agonizing results.

Likewise, our desire to maintain our comfort keeps us in places that eventually create anguish and distress.  Abuse of credit to keep a certain lifestyle will ultimately lead to a tormenting situation in the future.  Physically being sedentary is enjoyable for many years but eventually that lifestyle will lead to suffering and illness.  Our bodies were designed to be active and proper activity comes with some inconvenience and discomfort.  If we unwisely ignore the future results of our choices then our decisions to avoid pain or to pursue pleasure will end in unexpected sorrow.

So this is our daily challenge:  Choose your pain.  Accept that life will have some pain.  You cannot avoid it all.  Hedonism will ultimately have to pay the piper one day.  We cannot avoid paying the eventual cost for either our negligence or indulgence.  Pick your pain wisely.  Understand both the benefits and the cost – short term and long term.  Ask if what feels good now will hurt in the future.  Question if the pain that you are avoiding presently might have some ultimate benefit that you require.  Learn from the pain of that past and use that learning and experience to shrewdly pick your pains today so that tomorrow you might evade significant agonies and instead harvest the better pleasures that you so greatly desire.

“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
― William Goldman (“The Princess Bride”)

©2018 Scott D. Wilson

Decide! The Deadly Culture of Indecision

Decide! The Deadly Culture of Indecision
©2015 Scott D. Wilson, P.Eng.

“Only when a decision is made and a commitment to action occurs does any real change ever happen.” –SDW

The successful lead. That is a given fact. One phrase often associated with leadership is "a man of action." There is good rean for this association. Good leaders do not waffle or wait to seek consensus. When a faced with a choice they decide and then take action to follow through. That is how they get results. Success is about getting results. Indecision is crippling to leadership.

We are living in a culture of indecision.  We think that making no decision is safer than making the wrong one.  That is a deadly mistake.  Making the correct decision yields good results and we move on.  Making an incorrect decision yields poor results and we face the opportunity to change course and improve. Making no decision yields something and if that thing is good we try to take credit and if it is poor we hold on to deniability because we didn’t make the decision.  This is the mindset of a victim, not a victor. It is certainly not leadership nor is it conducive to any form of success.  Making no decision is actually making the decision not to decide and that can be deadly.

Imagine if an emergency room physician used such a mindset.  Patients would quickly start dying.  Fear of the wrong decision is not an option.  The doctor must choose and work with the results.  If we are to grow and improve then we face the same scenario.  Fear of the wrong choice is no excuse for not making a decision when one is required.  Indecision denies our power.  Indecision doubts our talents and abilities. Indecision withdraws. Only a decision and the commitment to act on it advances forward.

There is a Zen proverb that goes “When you sit, sit. When you stand, stand. Above all, don't wobble.” In martial arts we call this wobbling state being ‘double-weighted.’  A fighter who is double-weighted is vulnerable because their indecision in the face of an opponent has placed them in an unbalanced condition.  If their weight was on one leg or the other then they could seek to advance or withdraw, attack or defend.  In the double-weighted state they are prone to attack and vulnerable to being toppled.  Our poor fighter needs to decide and act in order to correct his situation. Decision must be linked with the commitment to act for it to be effective. An empty decision is no better than indecision.

Is life advancing on you like an opponent and demanding a decision?  Are there areas of your journey were you are faced with a choice on the path?  Do not let indecision rob you of your victory or stop you dead.  In life’s voyage, sitting down at the cross-roads is not truly an option.  Recognize the need for a choice. Believe in yourself and your wisdom to choose.  Make the decision.  Commit to action. Move forward and grow from the experience.

Know that you are the only one stopping yourself.