A Lesson About Pain From A Triathlete
Context, goals, and dialing your effort.
My friend Rebecca is a successful triathlete.
We were chatting about some of the injuries that she’s dealing with right now and the additional surgeries that she’ll need in the fall. There’s a hope that she’ll be able to hike and do some trail running this summer but if she goes too hard, she might create more damage.
As I nurse my own (much wimpier) ankle injury I resonated with her. Her mission wasn’t to work harder. Her mission wasn’t to be more flexible. Her mission wasn’t to stay in racing shape.
Her mission was: don’t mess it up.
For people who make things happen, hit goals, and are otherwise motivated to turn dreams into reality, this is a very real challenge.
For me, I still have my old high school track coach’s words in my head
“No pain, no gain!”
I’m sure many of you have that same voice.
This conversation reminded me of a time I was at the gym and overheard an elderly man talking with his friends. He must have been 80 years old.
I’ll never forget what he said because I literally laugh exploded when he said it:
“Well, for me it’s more like no pain . . . no pain.”
It was such a clear reminder of how our goals and efforts must shift based on the context we’re in. For him, he just wanted to play with his grandkids without cringing. For me, I just want to run some ridgelines this summer. For my triathlete friend Rebecca, she just wants to run with her dogs without chronic pain.
Sometimes it’s required to push past pain to achieve the goal. Sometimes, working hard has the opposite effect—which feels terrible since we use hard work to accomplish so many other things.
There’s a lesson about resilience and cognitive reframing in here—but I just wanted to focus on the point that sometimes the mission is as simple and boring as “don’t mess it up.”
So, get out there.
Or don’t.