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The great boxer Muhammed Ali was once asked how many sit ups he could do. He replied that he didn’t know because he only starts counting when it hurts.
Entrepreneurs experience mental pain quite frequently. Sales pitches that don’t work out, unexpected costs that emerge, differences of opinions with business partners and so many other challenges that seem to come out of nowhere.
The source of these problems is, of course, the desire to achieve things. It may not be intuitive but goals are the renewable source of pain.
If you’re trying to achieve something great, like starting a business or becoming a boxing world champion, there will be pain involved because there are goals involved.
How the great ones deal with pain
Everyone involved in doing interesting things will go through this. Some will come out on the other side stronger and wiser.
In the spirit of learning and getting inspiration, it’s useful to reflect on how some extraordinary people have managed to make progress during difficult times in their lives.
Here we go. (Links to the video in each photo below).
1) JK Rowling - Rock bottom sets you free. The author of the Harry Potter books found herself divorced, unemployed, with no money and a daughter to take care of.
“That period of my life was a dark one. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended.”
“Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was and began to direct all my energy into the only work that mattered to me.”
“I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
“You will never truly know yourself or the strength of your relationships until both have been tested by adversity.”
Hitting rock bottom gave JK Rowling the freedom to choose the path that she really wanted: working on her first book.
I’m not suggesting that you pursue failure, that’s not the point. The point is that even when landing in a worst case scenario there is still a way forward and it might be a much better one.
2) Charlie Munger - It’s ok to cry, but you have to keep going. Warren Buffett’s friend and business partner, who recently passed away, also went through tough times. He lost a 9-year old son to leukemia.
Much later in life he summarized what he learned with a simple reflection.
“The number one rule of life is that everybody struggles. If you have to walk through the streets crying for a few hours a day, go ahead and do that, but you can’t quit.”
Munger’s biographers tell the story of how he did just that. As his son was slowly dying of cancer and Munger spent much of his savings paying for treatment, he walked through the streets crying every day.
The message is: honor your suffering. You are a human being, not a machine. There is always a way forward but you need to accept the pain that is here now.
3) Jeff Bezos - Being yourself will require a lot of energy.
In his final letter to shareholders as CEO, Amazon’s founder had an insightful reflection about how hard it is to be yourself.
“We all know that distinctiveness – originality – is valuable. We are all taught to “be yourself.” What I’m really asking you to do is to embrace and be realistic about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness. The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen.
You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness, and it’s worth it. The fairy tale version of “be yourself” is that all the pain stops as soon as you allow your distinctiveness to shine. That version is misleading. Being yourself is worth it, but don’t expect it to be easy or free. You’ll have to put energy into it continuously.”
The pain you feel is a price you pay. What you get in exchange for it is the chance to be yourself, to express in the world that thing that only you could express.
Bezos is saying: don’t resent the pain, you’re getting something valuable in return.
4) Messi - Fight for your dreams as long as you can.
Before winning any titles with his national team, Messi lost four finals at important tournaments and endured fierce criticism from people in his own country.
At that point he had a reflection about trying.
“My goal is to win something with the Argentina national team and if I don’t, to try as many times as I can.”
“You fail, you get up and try again, you fight for your dreams. That’s not just football, it's life.”
In the sometimes fear-driven macho culture of sports, where “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”, it’s useful to get a glimpse of Messi’s mindset.
Perhaps the best athlete ever, he concedes that he might not win any titles with Argentina - at that point he hadn't. A few years later he had won everything with the national team.
Moral of his story? If it’s really your dream, keep moving forward as best as you can. Disregard the criticism, both external and internal. Making it is not the point. Trying is.
5) Jensen Huang - I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering.
NVIDIA’s founder and CEO talks eloquently about the difficulties of achieving greatness.
“People with high expectations have very low resilience. And unfortunately resilience matters in success.”
“I don’t know how to teach it to you except for I hope suffering happens to you.”
He welcomes pain and suffering in his company because: “Greatness is not intelligence, greatness comes from character. And character isn’t formed out of smart people, it’s formed out of people who have suffered.”
Self explanatory.
In conclusion
What these people are saying is that:
Hardship is inevitable.
It must be accepted.
It might be the way towards growth and self expression.
Choosing any path that is interesting or meaningful usually implies sacrificing comfort and security.
The reward for this decision is not in the money or the recognition. Nothing wrong with that. But the real payoff is in getting to know yourself and connecting to others from that genuine self.
I’ll close with a reflection from the children’s book series Timmy Failure, which we read with one of my sons during the pandemic:
"You can do what you’re doing now, Timmy, and give up. It’s certainly the easiest way. Or, you can fight. You can fight for what you want. You can fight for what you dream.”
“Now, maybe in the end you don’t get what you want. But the truth, Timmy -and maybe you haven’t lived long enough to realize this yet- the truth is that the beauty of life, the beauty of everything, is in that fight.”
Keep going.