73. Voluntary suffering

it just makes sense.

Today I am amid a running challenge of 4 miles every 4 hours for 48 hours.

Some would ask what is the point? Why would you do that to yourself? That’s surely too extreme?

Yet, to me, it is something I am excited about and feel grateful I can do.

One of the most interesting quotes I stumbled upon recently was by Naval Ravikant:

“If you want an easy life, do hard things. If you want a hard life, do easy things.”

To me, this speaks volumes.

It is the delayed gratification, the hardship, the voluntary suffering- that curate the person able to have a good life.

We often think we can cheat the grind with ‘the top 10 ways to’ guides and tips- yet, in reality for most things in life we know what we must do and it often just involves sitting down and doing the hard things.

“If pain comes first, pleasure follows. If pleasure comes first, pain follows.” - Naval Ravikant

The thing is we are hardwired to want the easy things.

We see it all around us.

David Hieatt suggests that our two biggest hindrances are: Dopamine + Impatience.

This is due to the fact that anything of real value requires hardship and long term commitment- the very thing dopamine and impatience discourage us against.

When we decide to commit something we recognise the struggle and how it will be boring but there must be a shift to fall in love with the small incremental improvements. No more big wow moment, but just turning up.

Life becomes quite simple- but we must stay committed.

“Success is a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.” - Jim Rohn

So back to my running saga- I’ve realised that choosing to simply stick to the task at hand is a great gift.

From the outside I am seemingly doing the exact same thing, running again and again seeing no visible differences, arguably there is no point.

Yet, I am getting fitter, growing in my pain tolerance, and getting comfortable with uncomfortable.

Mundane voluntary suffering often doesn’t make sense when we have an abundance of comfortable options- but it is the road to making a difference.