How to Make Yourself Immune to Pain - 10 Lessons from the Toughest Man Alive!
- Written by Rein Trotzuk 4/15/2020
Wait, can we really make ourselves immune to pain?
Whether it’s physical or emotional pain, we can apply specific strategies to take hold of any situation and find greatness on the other side. These strategies can take us from a place of pain and agony to one of peace and harmony. But before we jump into the strategies, let’s talk about what it means to feel pain. Physical pain is simply a sensation that is communicated between your nerves, spinal cord, and brain. Emotional pain is experienced through things like disrespect, criticism, or hatred. No matter what type of pain we may be suffering from, there is one thing in common: how our mind perceives that pain. Just as we can train our muscles to become stronger by lifting weights, we can train our mind to minimize the perception of pain. Challenging existing mental models isn’t an easy task, but it’s one that will pay dividends in the long run.
So how do we train our brains to become immune to pain?
First, let me introduce you to a man that has mastered this very task. His name is David Goggins. He transformed his life of spraying cockroaches to being well known as the toughest man on the planet. He has been to hell and back through his incredible military feats and is now one of the best endurance runners of all time. David's early age life was nowhere close to easy. Growing up in a tiny Indiana town just miles from where KKK was founded, he was severely bullied and struggled academically. To make things worse, he was also struggling with obesity, weighing in at over 300 pounds. Goggins felt soft, weak, defeated, and had little to no self-esteem. But through all his suffering, he decided that enough is enough, and it was time to make a shift in his life and start kicking some ass.
David had all the disadvantages in life. But through a mindset shift, he found himself outpacing those with even the most significant head start in life. David is the only member of the US Armed forces to complete the Navy SEAL training, the US Army Ranger's school, and the Air Force Tactical Air Controller Training. He's run eight consecutive 100-mile races over eight back-to-back weekends. He ran over 7,000 miles in a single year, which is the equivalent of running 267 marathons. He went from being the king of making excuses to someone that has accomplished some of the most difficult tasks known to humankind.
What would Goggins do? The 10 lessons I learned from the toughest man alive!
In order to accomplish big things in life, we first need to find ourselves. We need to realize that the only person capable of turning our situation around is our own self. When we put ourselves through incredibly hard situations, whether that is physical or mental we will find our truest self on the other side. Success is an inside job!
Have you ever noticed what happens to your hands when you first start to go to the gym, or your fingers when you first start to play the guitar? Our hands will hurt, we may get blisters or sores. But over time our skin thickens and these tasks that once caused pain no longer do. The reason this pain goes away is because our skin gets stronger and we build calluses. So why not take this same concept and apply it to our brain? We can build these same calluses on our brains when we work hard. It will be difficult at first and we will naturally want to quit, but just like our hands became resistant to pain our brain can too. We have to suffer a little in order to grow. If we take the easy route in life we may live our whole life without starting our true journey. If we do things we are uncomfortable with every day of our life before we know it we will develop an indestructible mindset. We will become comfortable with being uncomfortable!
We need to stop trying to figure out how to be someone else and start figuring out what we are about from the inside. Each one of us is writing our own book every day but we often don't take the time to read it back to ourselves. We need to take some time to think to ourselves, what are we proud of? What aren’t we proud of? It’s important that we don’t write fictional pages in our book just so that other people like us. We need to own it, both our strengths and weaknesses! If we don't admit our weaknesses we will never take the steps to improve on them.
We all have the ability to go into a space where we can accomplish anything. We can do this when we figure out how to connect our mind with our body. Motivation can come and go but when you are driven to accomplish something you will figure out a way. Your mind may tell you it’s time to stop, often far before you are at your limit. The next time things are getting tough ask yourself? Is this just my mind trying to trick me into taking the easy route? Will taking the easy route lead to success and greatness? Instead of giving up, figure out how to break the task down into small steps and focus on one at a time. This will give you the drive to power through!
We live in a very external world where we are often looking for materialistic things outside of ourselves to heal our pain. We often get stuck living in a “someday” culture. Someday when I have that job/car/partner/success I will be happy. But we need to flush it all out. The one thing we all need to do is believe in ourselves. We can find greatness in ourselves. Take time to be silent with yourself and ask, why are you here on this planet? How can I help serve the world? What can I do today that will write a page in my book that I will be proud to read tomorrow?
At times of hell and suffering, we may forget how tough we really are. When times get tough we need to look back and remind ourselves what we have overcome in life. Write down all your accomplishments in life, big and small. Imagine putting all of these in a cookie jar and then during our hardest times put your hand into this jar and pull out one of these accomplishments to drive yourself forward, even in the hardest times.
Do you want to be happy? Work so hard that you get to the point where you're not afraid to face the thing on the other side of the door, even if you know it’s something that can defeat you. This will make you happy. We need to have the courage to be vulnerable. When we feel that rumble inside of being scared, we need to think to ourselves. How do I want to be remembered? As someone that knocked down the door and gave it their all, or someone who slowly turned the doorknob and peaked his head around the corner?
We will all face difficult and challenging times in our life. We need to equip ourselves with different tools to help us through these times. We all have a “darkside” deep down somewhere that we can strategically tap into. Goggins calls this “taking someone's soul”. This is where we take all the hurt and negative comments you have ever heard from others and transform it into the fuel that will power you to greatness! This is a time where you can think back to all the naysayers and prove them wrong.
Most people quit as soon as things get tough. This makes it easy to be successful in today's age. If you train yourself to have an “I’ll do it anyway” mentality you are already leaps ahead of your competition. Never forget that on the other side of these tough obstacles you will find greatness.
Be a warrior in life. This is about “doing whatever it takes” even if that means you need to suffer. But don't just do it for yourself. It needs to be bigger than yourself. Do it for the people beside you, do it for the ones you love in your life. You have two options, to go in hard and attack it, or to go in soft and quit when things get difficult. It’s not about being better than anyone else. We grow by being better than how we were yesterday.
So how have these learnings impacted my life?
All of these lessons are immensely valuable but the real life changer for me was understanding that our brains are always trying to trick us into taking the easy route in life. Whether it’s during a long run or learning something new my mind will often tell me that it’s time to throw in the towel and take a break. As soon as things get difficult I can start hearing it say “this is all we have, let’s give up”. Old me would have listened to those thoughts and gave in. But the more I have pushed back on those thoughts the more I realize that I have so much more to give. Now when I hear those thoughts rumbling in my mind I think to myself “not today, we’re just getting fucking started”! It’s through this very mindset shift that I have pushed myself to accomplish some incredible feats over the last year. Things like running my first marathon, reading and summarize over 20 books, and building this community with my good friend Brain Chien. We all have a Goggins inside, find him, unleash him, and watch your life transform.
“The most important conversation is the one you have with yourself.”
