Excellence always carries a cost, and that cost is pain. Whether it is the struggle of getting through grueling workouts, the long grind of a career, the embarrassment of starting something new, or the confusion of being a white belt in jiu jitsu, progress demands discomfort. Those willing to endure what others avoid are the ones who earn the reward.
“Excellence is the capacity to take pain.”
-Isadore Sharp
Or another way I've heard it said is that 'success is achievement through difficulty'. However you look at it, any meaningful pursuit will have some kind of physical and/or mental obstacles that will seem very painful at times.
In health, pain takes many forms. Sometimes it means giving up sugar or alcohol. Other times it is the realization of how long the road ahead will be after years of living a sedentary lifestyle.
As a CrossFit gym owner for many years, I always told new members that their first workout would be terrible. But I also told them their second workout would also suck. As would every workout after that. The pain never goes away; it simply changes. At first it's the physical anguish of the workout itself, then it is the realization of the long road ahead. Later it becomes the challenge of making it through an hour-long class two or three times per week. What makes this pain bearable is the people you share it with. The community you find inside a gym can turn difficulty into something meaningful, or even 'fun'.
In business, there's also pain. For someone beginning a career at the bottom, it may mean decades of long hours, strategy pivots, job changes, and time away from family before reaching the c-suite. There is also the pain of unmet expectations. Sometimes it is the disappointment of realizing you are not as far along as you hoped.
Embarrassment is another form of pain. It may happen at your first yoga class when you cannot touch your toes. It also happens in the early days of a startup when the founders are eating ramen noodles and producing content that nobody sees or hears.
In martial arts. A white belt in jiu jitsu spends much of the early days lost and confused. There is the mental frustration of not knowing what is happening and the physical reality of someone trying to choke you or bend your arm in the wrong direction. It is hard to imagine any kind of excellence in those early stages, yet this is how everyone's journey begins.
If it is true that in the end we generally get what we deserve, then the more painful the path, the greater the reward. This is not because pain guarantees success, but because so few people are willing to endure it in the first place. Not only that, but we also don't know how long the pain will last.
Heck, some people can't even handle the pain of an early alarm clock.
When it comes to our fitness, great gyms like those in the Gym Force network, pain is not avoided but shared, worked through, and ultimately valued. Excellence does not happen any other way.
There are very few things worth obtaining that don't require a fair amount of pain. Fortune and fame. Status, power and yes, real fitness and health.