“The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That’s what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no matter what happens.”
This is from the same man who recorded the following, years before a word of it came to fruition:
“I will come to America, which is the country for me. Once here, I will become the greatest bodybuilder in history… While I am doing this I will
learn perfect English and educate myself – but only with those things I need to know. I will get a college degree so I can get a business degree… Simultaneously I will make whatever money possible from bodybuilding and invest it in real estate where I will make the big money… I will go into the movies as an actor, producer and eventually director. By the time I am 30 I will have starred in my first movie and I will be a millionaire… I will collect houses, art and automobiles. I will see the world. Along the way, I will learn to impress people and I will hone my mind to outwit all of them… I will marry a glamorous and intelligent wife. By 32, I will have been invited to the white house…” (citation)
He achieved all of the above and more.
But the pain period is inevitable. If you have the leverage necessary to embrace it, you transcend it and reach a new level. If you can’t handle it and you run back to your comfort zone, there you will stay.
Your comfort zone does not expand until you leave it. But by leaving it, you guarantee discomfort. That’s the rub. You must experience the pain of any given level before that level becomes painless.
You have to run for at least 30 minutes before the battery acid in your veins turns into productive energy.
You have to endure 30 sets of tearing muscle tissue until that muscle becomes stronger.
You have to take rejection from 30 girls before you approach one who is even compatible with you.
You have to wake up at 7 a.m. 30 days in a row before you don’t feel like shit when the alarm clock rings.
You have to resist buying a dozen things that you want to own if you want to be the master of your finances.
You have to send out several dozen resumes before one of them is even considered for an interview by a legitimate employer. You probably have to face a dozen interviewers before you’re comfortable dazzling them and get the job. You probably have to go through half a dozen jobs to find the career that’s right.
Pain. Pain. Pain. Pain. Pain. Pain. And more pain.
All of it leading to growth.
All of it the test of my worthiness to claim that before which it stands guard. All of it the price of personal evolution.
But I don’t really pay the price for getting to the next level. I really pay the price for complacency. For avoiding the pain, the discomfort, the risks, the hard work, the bullshit, the periods during which I seem to be getting nowhere, I pay the price of living a lame and forgettable life that adds nothing of value to the world.
So I’ll take the pain. I’ll wear it as a badge of honor. I’ll face it head on as I smash through the walls of my comfort zone, and sit with it as I wait for new walls to build. I’ll utterly destroy my old self until I have no choice but to adapt and adopt a new self. And never stop.
I’ll land this plane with the following awesome video from speaker Owen (a.k.a. Tyler Durden) Cook:
