The Decision That Kills Joy

By Les Mottosky

Consider the purpose of pain. It's the one thing we all seek to avoid. It's an inevitable part of life, yet we'll distort who we are to escape experiencing it. Interesting right?

Avoidance is our favourite pain strategy. It feels good. It feels like relief. It feels like comfort, but it's the worst strategy for our long term well-being. Avoidance of pain blunts our vitality.

The scarred, the battle-tested and the wise understand pain has significant utility.

It's a teacher. It might even be the great teacher.

We typically conflate different forms of pain, overlooking the critical distinctions between them. It's not only physical. Nor is it exclusively social, mental or the ache of grief or loss. (Though they can also contain lessons.)

The joy killer is spiritual pain. The agony of not being who we are; it's a rejection or deflection of the love that is constantly flowing to us. This response to pain leads to suffering. We choose something that's avoidable rather than embracing the temporary.

Pain is not what society or allopathic medicine suggests: an absence of comfort.

In the 1970's the hospice movement began emphasizing comfort and quality of life for terminally ill patients. Over the decades, comfort as a systematic prioritization emerged in broader medical practice and became part of patient-centered care alongside clinical outcomes. Today, our culture seems to pathologize pain.

Human thriving is diminished by two unintentional societal "marketing campaigns": one from medicine and one from tech. They sell us comfort and convenience, respectively, as priorities of our lifestyles.

Both of these conceal the inevitably – and necessity – of pain. (Inconvenience is a metaphorical pain.)

We mistake embracing the reprieve of comfort for the need to feel progress, growth or accomplishment. This delays getting our needs met.

Comfort is chosen, but it can also be bought. Buying requires money, money requires earning, earning requires effort, and effort leads to accomplishment. So pursuing comfort is the long route to the ends we actually crave: accomplishment, progress or growth. Comfort is a misguided detour.

So, yes, we avoid pain at all costs. It's a natural impulse. But when that impulse shows up, we should also be pliable enough to get curious about the message it might contain. If we embrace the temporary discomfort and inconvenience of pain to acquire the lesson it carries, we can sidestep the sensation we're actually trying to evade: suffering.

This is critical to understand because suffering is the graveyard of joy.

It grows, blossoms and flourishes in the soil of convenience and comfort.

The simple-but-not-easy lesson? Embrace that pain. Avoid the suffering. Enjoy your progress.

TAGS: #Audacious Strategies #Adaptation As Innovation #Wisdom At Work #Bad Human Habits #Human Performance

Les Mottosky

Adaptation Strategist // I help organizations turn creativity into their competitive advantage by aligning leadership, culture and strategy to unlock adaptive innovations.

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lesmottosky@mac.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/les-mottosky-9b94527/