No Pain - No Gain?

                                                                                                       

What the world needs now is more pain!  Without discomfort and pain, not much happens. South-seas-island consciousness didn’t ever produce much progress. The major pieces of thinking and innovation that have moved the world along all came from cold climates.  It seems to me that none of the “PIIGS” countries in the current major financial turmoil are noted for their strong work ethics!

And why do we seek out personal development programs in the first place? I'd bet that it’s not because we're feeling on top of the world. We want to change something, to improve some aspect of life that is unsatisfying. And that may lead us on to follow a spiritual path. But what did those truly powerful personal development programs actually offer? They essentially facilitated a social outpouring of emotion that had not been acceptable in the previous couple of generations. Sure, it was good stuff, but was it perhaps motivated by the need for generational pain relief?

Any experienced corporate consultant will tell you that what best motivates organisational change is impending or existing pain. There’s nothing like an organisational crisis as a good motivation for teambuilding! 

It seems that when a state of comfort is attained, the urge to grow and change fades away. What most people want is a painkiller rather than a vitamin pill. But is it all simply a case of ‘No pain – no gain’?

If we seek future 'pain avoidance' rather than immediate 'pain relief' we often get more than we expect. If we seek to understand the cause-and-effect of the pain, we may start to wonder; we may become curious enough to explore and learn. So pain and discomfort is probably the most common impetus for learning and growth. It can give us a forward momentum that, even after the pain has been relieved, can draw us onwards towards broader understandings and bigger life experiences. But there is one proviso on how far it can take us – we need to find it personally meaningful. What a magic switch – from pain avoidance to seeking meaning! 

I guess the highest meaning for an individual is around discovering a purpose in life that’s worth living for. Perhaps life is in fact meaningless, however what is certainly true is that all people have a desire, and even a need, to make something meaningful of it. Having pursued the subject for many years both personally and with many thousands of other seekers, my conclusion is that purpose and meaning are very much tied to the timeframe we hold in mind.

It would seem that the purpose of life on this planet is about the experience of being human – which may or may not get you out of bed in the morning! If we shorten that timeframe to one lifetime, it would seem that life purpose is about experiencing love in one or more of its many manifestations. But that tends to be the broad purpose of anyone’s life, so while it might be true, it is not necessarily personally meaningful. Shorten the timeframe again and a meaningful purpose might be to raise a family, find a particular kind of partner, learn to express joy, master independence etc. My purpose today is to write this blog!

So there are many layers or levels to a life purpose, each bounded by a different timeframe. Maslow's hierarchy of needs similarly reflects a different timeframe at each level. It is only Maslow's self-actualisation level where questions of life purpose even begin to arise.

So what is the purpose of a purpose? There is no doubt that if one vigorously pursues a purpose greater than oneself then opportunities for personal development appear on all sides. If we seize those opportunities, we learn to make finer and finer distinctions in that area and our level of awareness will increase. Chances are we will get to grow to eventually become the person who embodies that original purpose. So a purpose is simply a vehicle for growth.

Fulfilling a purpose causes it to lose its meaningfulness – and can leave us wondering what the whole journey was about. So we can languish on that level of awareness – and instead of 10 year’s precious life experience we get one year’s experience 10 times! 

There is a Chinese curse, attributed to Confucius, that says “May you live in interesting times”. I consider it a blessing rather than a curse, because “interesting times” such as those right now, create the pain that kicks the cycle off again. Pain that is not easily resolved will fire up resourcefulness, cause us to again search for a higher, meaningful purpose, and off we will go on a new, and hopefully higher, level of the journey.

Here’s the how the cycle works: Pain (the felt need for change) leads to Seeking (finding a meaningful purpose), which leads to Striving (to make it real), which leads to Attaining (success – and subsequent loss of higher purpose), which leads eventually back to Pain (the felt need for a higher level of experience) etc etc. Has that been your experience?

No pain – no gain? Bring it on!

Or do you know another way?


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