The Most Important Question You Can Ask Yourself Today

[Erick the Red]

I just read an interesting article:

 

The Most Important Question You Can Ask Yourself Today

 

Everybody wants what feels good. Everyone wants to live a care-free, happy and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money and be popular and well-respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when you walk into the room.

 

Everybody wants that -- it's easy to want that.

 

If I ask you, "What do you want out of life?" and you say something like, "I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like," it's so ubiquitous that it doesn't even mean anything.

 

Everyone wants that. So what's the point?

 

What's more interesting to me is what pain do you want? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives end up.

 

A little later in the article, relevant to a lot of what we are doing here:

 

At the core of all human behavior, the good feelings we all want are more or less the same. Therefore what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire but by what bad feelings we're willing to sustain.

 

"Nothing good in life comes easy," we've been told that a hundred times before. The good things in life we accomplish are defined by where we enjoy the suffering, where we enjoy the struggle.

 

People want an amazing physique. But you don't end up with one unless you legitimately love the pain and physical stress that comes with living inside a gym for hour upon hour, unless you love calculating and calibrating the food you eat, planning your life out in tiny plate-sized portions.

 

I might quibble about some specifics, but I think he is right about the larger question.

 

I believe that what you get out of life is not determined by what you want.  The quality of your life is in large part determined by how much you are willing to struggle. 

 

Please read the whole thing.

[El Exorcisto]

ALL the pain!!

[Space_Elf]

That is a really good question and a good article, thanks for sharing. It given me something to think about.

[Vella]

Hm.  I'd disagree with him that you have to look forward to the pain and the suffering.
I think you have to accept that it's going to happen, and it's much better if you can find the silver lining in it - sure, this essay is taking up heaps of my time, but I love the process of solving the problems, and I love getting good marks, so I'll endure that all-nighter I need to pull, because other aspects of the painful think make up for it.

 

It's fundamentally a cost-benefit analysis for me.  I really dislike some parts of the things I love.  I'll never enjoy the moment when I realise an entire scene of a novel sucks and I have to rewrite it.  I'll probably never find pleasure in reading through the essay sources where the writer seems to have his head firmly encased in his rectum, and writes sentences that take up half the page and have five sub-clauses, none of which quite make sense, or decides to quote French or Latin sources in the original language, not provide translations or explanations, and then hinge about half their argument on those quotations.  These things will always make me want to sigh, kick walls and drink tea until the rage goes away.

But I love writing novels and essays despite these things.  Because the good outweighs the bad.

 

...It's probably going to undermine my point that I am one of those people who loves the pain and stiffness of a good workout.  Early mornings and being hungry can still take a long walk off a short pier, though.

[Mad Hatter]

I disagree with him. I'd much rather focus on the journey and not the goal, and I want my trip to be FUN! Not everyday's going to be amazing, but I'd rather take 90% awesome and 10% pain and not reach my goal then 90% pain and 10% awesome and reach my goal. 

[Thom Stépan]

This is very interesting. It is really asking are you willing to pay the price to get what you really want? I assume that everyone that is a part of NF from newbies all the way up to Steve himself are willing to pay the price of being fit (however we define that). What else are we willing to pay the price for? What pain and suffering will we endure to reach our goals. So long as the benefits outweigh the costs in our own minds then we will do it. Once the perceived costs outweigh the perceived benefits we will not go for it.

I enjoyed this article thanks.