Productive Pain

I’ve realized that most entrepreneurial endeavors fail because the people behind them think the process will be easy. They believe their business or project will magically happen because they’re educated, well-funded, or exceptionally good at something.

Success doesn’t work that way.

Real, lasting success is spelled P-A-I-N.

The process of being successful at anything is painful. You’ll work long hours with no or little pay; there’ll be naysayers and people who don’t want you to be successful; friends will laugh at you; and you’ll never have enough time or money. If you graduated from business school, you’d soon realize that your education didn’t end with your degree but has only just begun. So, you’ll need to learn to learn again. You’ll need to drop your ego and be ok with making mistakes. And you will make mistakes. You’ll suddenly realize that you might not be the most intelligent person in the room, so you might painfully need to learn to shut up, listen, and take advice from others who want to help.

Entrepreneurial success is painful. Heck, success of any kind will be painful until you learn to embrace the pain. First, you must understand that pain is part of the process. Pain is an essential part of success. You can argue all you want with me, but the hard truth is that you will achieve nothing without pain. Look at any world-class athlete. The incredible dedication and pain an athlete must endure to compete is sometimes incomprehensible.

You must embrace the pain and welcome it as Productive Pain. The old axiom, “the more pain, the more gain, “isn’t far from the truth. Many successful entrepreneurs will say that another factor of entrepreneurial failure is a complete underestimation of the amount of TIME, MONEY, and EFFORT required to endeavor success. Author Grant Cardone says that once you know the amount of time, money, and effort you need, you need 10X that number for reality.

You must understand clearly the effort and pain essential to be successful and then discipline yourself to do whatever is necessary every day, without fail. Clarity of purpose, passion for that purpose, and a commitment to the required effort are essential.

And a commitment to the required effort is the hard part. Success requires a daily discipline of sticking to your plan and “doing what you must do when you must do it, whether you want to or not.” That’s discipline.

So, stop your whining. Success will be painful. PAIN will be your productive driving force to whatever level of success you seek. It is a productive pain that allows you to enjoy your success when you reach your goal. When you embrace the productive pain, the person you see in the mirror will be someone that you’re proud of becoming, knowing that the pain and sacrifice were well worth it.