#251 | The GIFT Of Pain: Embracing Difficulty As A Tool

Pain changes all of us, but most people never learn how to use it instead of run from it. This episode is about building a healthier relationship with discomfort so you can become more resilient, mentally tougher, and more grounded when life gets heavy. We talk about how your self-talk shapes performance under pressure, why suffering can become a catalyst for growth, and how to train your mind to keep moving when everything in you wants to stop. If you’ve been in a hard season lately, this one will hit home.

Thank you for tuning in! If you feel led, please subscribe & share the show to others who you believe would benefit from it.
Keep in touch below!

• Join The Unshakeable Discipline Community! 
• Winning Is... Weekly Newsletter!
• LinkedIn | www.linkedin.com/in/ryanacass/
• Instagram | @ryanacass

Transcript

Welcome And Why Pain Matters

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Welcome to Win Today. This show is created for those who want to win in every aspect of their lives. Every week, you will learn from a renowned thought leader that will share a piece of a winning playbook that you can incorporate into your life. If this show has a positive impact on you and you see value in it, please share it with somebody and leave a rating in review so we can help more people win. Pain can play a useful role in your life. I like to bring this up once a year to remind people that we're all gonna go through something in life and we've already been through many things. One thing that is inevitable about life is that it will change and it will end. On average, the adult goes through 34 changes in their lifetime, 34 significant changes, whether that's a breakup, marriage, losing a loved one, etc., in our adult lives, we will experience up to 34 changes. And some of those changes may not feel so good, and they may be painful. Now, on the other side of that, through the right lens, is likely a better version of you, a stronger version, a more aware version, somebody that knows what to look out for, somebody that becomes more resilient. But it's important to know how to deal with this and to have the right mindset when these moments arrive or when you're going through something difficult. And I believe that it's also important to simulate that as well. I saw something really powerful from Steve Magnus recently. Steve is a performance coach, former USA track and field athlete, has coached several elite runners and Olympians, and I really love his training philosoph philosophies and life philosophies as well. So he put out this post and it says this every once in a while, you gotta go see God in a workout. Go to the absolute well. Push so far that you think you see the light. Question why in the world you're voluntarily doing this. It's true in sport and in life. You've got to do things that disrupt your understanding and realign your perspective. Now, big thing here. It's true in sport and in life. And another thing that he mentions in this caption is sometimes we gotta do something crazy to see what we're capable of. Now, in that moment, I believe he's referencing that we've gotta put ourselves through something so difficult that it will likely induce pain, but on the other side is a better you, a stronger you, a more resilient you, so that when these things do happen in life, regardless of what it is, you're prepared and ready. I've shared recently that I've been going through some challenges lately and it's tested me like I didn't think it would. And I'm grateful to be able to tap into the training aspect, and I'm grateful to have put my body and mind through several very rigorous tests so that you know, in this season that I'm in, that yes, it's not fun, but I don't feel unprepared. And I want everybody to feel prepared and ready when these moments do arise. So I'm bringing back an episode that was really popular last year about pain and opened up by Cameron Haynes. I want you all, regardless of where you are in life, to be able to deal with pain and see it as your friend and embrace it so that you can win today. Thank you. What if pain is not, in fact, the enemy? What if it's a protagonist versus an antagonist? What if pain is actually your friend? Pain can often be associated as the antagonist, something to avoid or suppress or conquer. But what would life look like and what would hard moments look like if we were able to develop a relationship with pain that allowed it to show up as a friend, a companion or a teacher that's always going to give us something and sharpen us. That's what this episode is all about is how to make pain your friend and how this can help you in various points of your life. I've found that I've been sharing this a lot with people lately and sharing it as encouragement that, hey, especially when it comes up in endurance events, that hey, it's gonna get tough out there. But when that physical hurt does come, rather than allowing that hurt, the sore quads, the the knees, the Achilles, the calves, whatever it may be, rather than allowing that to have a louder voice than your willpower, what if we welcome that with, hey, this hurts, but oh, by the way, this is also making me better, and I welcome that. Versus on the flip side, oh, this hurts, this really sucks. I don't know if I can keep going, and this pain is bad, maybe everybody else doesn't have pain like I do. What happens then? Now we are in a losing battle, and we only see this pain as what it is is pain and not something good. So this is something that really hit me a few years ago. That opening clip there was actually from Cameron Haynes, who many of you are likely familiar with. He is a beacon in the endurance world for sure. I watched a video where he was working out and he shared that ending line. When you become friends with pain, you'll never be alone in life. And I remember hearing that, and it instantly stuck with me. But then I started thinking about well, what does that actually mean? How can you actually become friends with something that hurts you? And over time I realized it's it's not about ignoring the pain, it's about seeing what it gives you. So we're going to go and talk through how you can actually make pain your friend. And here are the steps from my experience, and then a couple things with research. But let's let's dive right in. So the first thing that we need to be able to do is look back at a moment in your life, or in this case, it could be particular, it could be several moments, but look back at a painful moment in your life. And that could be something that was during a race, it could be something that was a tough season of your life, a bad breakup, growing up in a difficult household, whatever the case may be. Everybody has something along those lines that took place in their life that was in fact painful. And as you think back to that moment or particular set of moments, I want you to ask yourself a few things. Did you, as a result of this experience, do something differently in your life today so that that same thing doesn't reappear? Or did it give you a quality that you show up with for the people that you love today? Meaning, did it give you one of the best qualities or attributes that you're proud to possess today? Did it strengthen a value, a boundary, or a skill? Did it make you stronger? Now if the answer is yes to one sum or all of the questions, now you have evidence that hey, difficult moments, or in this case pain, did bring me good. That's the first step in being able to recognize the the value with pain and actually build some sort of positive connotation with it. Is let's first look back at our life at a time where we were met with pain, and then oh, when we resume out, as often when we can see things the most, and you find out, oh, wait, pain has made me better in some way. Therefore, I've got at least some relic of personal evidence that this is in fact a good thing. Now, for me, in my early years growing up in a in a broken household, a a family line with a long-standing trend of alcoholism and emotional and mental abuse. From my earliest moments, as I've shared on this podcast many times, but this may be your first time listening, that I was the middleman between my parents. My job was to keep the peace, to make sure my little sister wouldn't hear what was going on. And I was often up until two, three, four o'clock in the morning on school nights because you know my dad really struggled with alcohol, would come home late, and then that's where chaos would ensue between him and my mom. Sometimes the police would show up at the house, and it wasn't good. So growing up, for me, pain was pain. And seeing my parents split up, there was nothing good to me at that moment. I thought, as an angry kid and eventually an angry teenager, why can't we just have a normal family? And think that the folks down the street, because they were always happy and playing, that that meant that they were always happy too, but we don't know what's always going on behind the scenes of someone's life or behind the doors, behind the walls of the house. And it wasn't until I was 18 when I decided to go to a military college that I really had my my eyes opened and could see all of the goodness that my eyes were closed off to. My eyes and my mind. Eyes, mind, and heart, actually. That my eyes, mind, and heart were closed off to. Hence going to a military college. And then from there, I started asking myself questions. You know, how am I actually going to create this life and fulfill this promise that I've made that I'm never going to put my family, my future family, God willing, my future spouse, God willing, that how am I going to ensure that I never, ever, ever possibly go down this route? And so I started doing homework. I said, well, what is it about people that we often read about and talk about so much? Whether it be David Goggins, whether it be Jocko Willink, whether it be Michael Jordan, the list goes on. What is it that makes these people so special? And if you look at the thread, there's a common thread amongst many things that they all do. But one thing in particular is that they've converted trauma or pain into triumph, meaning that they haven't gone on living their whole lives with this victim mentality or taking the pain that they've faced as, oh, woe is me, this sucks. They've all taken it and really catapulted as as a result of it because they were able to flip a switch. And at that point, that's what made me look back and realize holy smokes, my mind and eyes have been closed off to all of the gifts that I've been given while going through the late nights at home, while answering the door to the police when things would happen. Now, it doesn't mean in those moments you automatically celebrate them, but again, this is all about how do we keep our minds open first and foremost. So that's when I realized, oh wow, there is always good. There is always good to be found in the difficulty. So that was my evidence. That was the evidence I needed to start viewing difficult moments as good, and being able to identify the goodness in difficult moments and more so in pain and building that relationship. So that's your first step, and then my example that identify a moment that's going to give you some evidence that okay, you've been through something difficult and it's given you something. And if you are perhaps closed off to some of that, it's my intent that by sharing a brief example of my life that that could get you to open your mind and expand your mind a little bit as well. Now, taking that, what we're gonna do next is is reprogram our mind. So there's a beautiful piece of research that I found from the University of Columbia, and you may be familiar with the concept of neuroplasticity. Basically, what that means is that our minds are extremely malleable, and our minds can be programmed and wired to create certain responses based off of certain cues. So just like when you get out of the shower, it's autopilot for you, like clockwork. What are you doing first? You're grabbing a towel. Why? Because that is your body's cue, your mind's cue that my body is wet, I'm now out in the open, I must become dry, I'm gonna grab this towel. You could do it with your eyes closed, with your feet tied to each other, you're going for that towel. Just like we can do that, we can also create responses in our brains that when situation X arises, Y thought or Y thought, why thought or Y action is my response. So the University of Columbia found that our brains through neurogenesis produce about 700 neurons a day. That basically means that there's a lot of stuff going on upstairs that is enabling our minds to download useful programs and delete programs that don't serve us anymore. So we can download a program in our mind just like we would downloading something on our iPhone or Android. Uh, that really stinks if you're an Android fan, just kidding, kind of. But you can download an app just like you can download a belief in your mind. So, with that, here's the software that I want you to install. For me, it's very simple. It's pain is my friend. And the more that I repeat that program or execute that program, meaning speak it out loud and put it out there into the universe, the more that my body and mind believe it. And it's really just a part of who I am now. I can tell you that like clockwork. Pain is my friend. And I want you to repeat that whatever it may be. Maybe it's pain is your friend, maybe pain is my homie, whatever you want. But think about the program you want to download, and then just like learning lyrics to a song, you repeat it, and we've got that program now. And then now we get to apply it in real time. So the reason why I want you to think about the program beforehand is because the more time we spend repeating it or quote singing that song, the more ingrained it is in our in our brains that, hey, this is my conditioned response. And now I'm gonna practice that when a difficult moment does arise or when that physical hurt does come to pay me a little visit because it's gonna happen. So now getting into the getting into the application. So, how do we actually apply this in real time? It most commonly comes up for me in endurance events, just because that's something that I participate in quite frequently, or as an avid runner and just fitness guy working out a lot, there are a lot of moments in life and time where this physical pain does come to pay a visit. And really, I could just say where my friend comes to pay me a visit. And so uh most recently in the Chicago Marathon a couple weeks ago, having a decent race, pretty good race, and uh the intent was to run about uh two to four minute negative split on the back half, which is which is pretty aggressive, but I've I believe and I believed that we could get it done that day. Ended up being about a minute negative split, so not totally there. And with that, you know, it it around mile, around mile 22. You know, my quads are are physically hurting. It's the sun's beaming. Uh my whole outfit is completely soaked, so starting to feel some of that, some of that chafing coming up, and that's when that when that voice comes to to pay you a little visit that hey, you can slow down, it's okay, no big deal. I know it's hot out, but instead of fighting that and seeing it as, okay, here's this adversarial force that's coming to take me down, that's where you know I start to smile and I'm saying, oh, hey, I'm I'm hanging out with my friend Payne. It's good to it's good to see you. Let's have some fun. And sometimes just like just like you would with your friends, you'll you'll taunt it. You know, you probably have some friends you're competitive with or that you like to you like to bring the best out of each other, maybe, maybe dig at them just. A little bit. Sometimes I'll even like to say to pain, you know, is that all you've got for me today? Is that really all you've got? Because you're gonna need a lot more than that to get me down. Or, you know, sometimes I'll I'll say, Hey, pain gods. You know, I got one question for you. Can you give me some more? And oddly, when I do this, I find that some of the pain, not all of it, it doesn't just magically make things go away. But some of the pain actually subsides. And my mind unlocks a new gear because I've turned pain from a threat into a teammate. So think about this as well. Just further expanding on pain being your friend. I would imagine that you would want a friend in your life that is going to make you better, that is going to push your limits, that is going to help you reach levels that you couldn't have done so completely on your own, right? That's one of the, I would say, that's a few ideal traits of an awesome friend. So when pain does come to visit you, recognize that, hey, it's making you better. It's challenging you. On the other side of that visit is a better version of you. Because you're gonna come out of it having learned something, you're gonna come out of it having endured because you're not gonna let this friend beat you, right? So if I haven't convinced you yet that pain is your friend, let me add one more, let me add one more bonus in here about the self-talk element, and I figured what better way to do that than by looking back at some of the books that I have and figured, what better book than Can't Hurt Me, David Goggins Can't Hurt Me, to find something about pain. This is one of my favorite books that I read probably five or six years ago, and many of you have likely likely read it as well. If there's anybody that has an iron mind that we can all learn from and has converted pain into triumph, uh it is most certainly David Goggins. And I have highlighted this book up, down, sideways, back and forth, and and I found this quote in, and I'll do my best to read it in a Goggins-esque voice. So here we go.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

People have a hard time going through Bud's healthy, and you're going through it on broken legs. Who else would even think of this? I asked. Who else would even be able to run one minute on one broken leg, let alone two? Only Goggins. You are 20 minutes in this business, Goggins. You are a fucking machine. Each step you run from now on to the end will only make you harder.

Choose Pain As An Ally

SPEAKER_02 25:16

The last message cracked the code like a password. My callused mind was my ticket forward, and at the 40 minute mark, something remarkable happened. The pain receded to low tide. The tape had loosened so it wasn't cutting into my skin, and my muscles and bones were warm enough to take some pounding. The pain would come and go throughout the day, but it became much more manageable, and when the pain did show up, I told myself it was proof of how tough I was and how much tougher I was becoming. Day after day, the same ritual played itself out. I showed up early, duct taped my feet, endured 30 minutes of extreme pain, talked myself through it, and survived. So that right there is an example of how not only Pain became Goggin's friend, but he recognized it immediately in that moment as something more than what it was. What he said there was, I know that each step, every step I take, every minute, will only make me harder. Now, zooming out from that, there's also an important thing that he's doing here. Notice how he's speaking in third person versus first. So he's not saying I can do this. Now he believes that, but he's speaking to himself in third person. You can do this, Goggins. This is what's called psychological distancing. So here's the bonus concept psychological distancing, and that's shifting the voice from I to you. I had a an amazing conversation with Steve Magnus on the podcast last year after he wrote his one of his books, Do Hard Things. And he talks about this concept and how just by shifting that voice from I to you, there's research from the University of Michigan that shows that what it does is it it takes the pressure off yourself, but also it creates a crowd-like effect. So think about think about it like this. If I'm telling you, hey, you can do this Ryan, or you can do this, Joe, you can do this, Michael, you can do this, Katie, whoever the case may be, then it's gonna boost you up a lot more because now you've got somebody rooting for you. When I think about those tough miles in Chicago, there's tens of thousands of people that are to the left and right side of the road that are literally shouting your name, whatever you have written on your bib, and it keeps you going. So what that study from University of Michigan showed is that it literally rewrites how you process stress when you shift the word from I to you, and that's that psychological distance concept, and what Goggins demonstrated. In addition to that, he recognized pain for something bigger than what it was. So, with that, pain will visit you again, whether it's in training, in relationships, or in your life. And when it does, just remember that you've already proven it can give you something good because you've gone back and reflected on what it has brought you in the past. You can reprogram your response, and you get to choose. Choose being the key word, you get to choose whether pain becomes your enemy or your friend. So next time that it does pay you a visit, you get to tell it, hey friend, or hey, whatever you want to call it. But just like I like to say, hey pain, it's good to see you again. Let's go have some fun. Pain is here to make you better and to help you win today. Thank you.