Pain is the best teacher, but nobody wants to attend its class

“Pain is the best teacher, but nobody wants to attend its class.”

This is a well-known saying in martial arts, and so it applies to any other discipline too, including business, studying and learning any skill. Without effort and sacrifice, you rarely achieve a goal. The question is not “what do you want to achieve?” but “how much pain are you willing to endure to achieve it?”

I’ll never forget a woman of about 29 who came to the gym for the first time to learn self-defence. She had been the victim of an attempted sexual assault in the entrance hall of her building. The self-defence instructor had a reputation as one of the best. Being one of the best meant he would make you one of the best, which meant you were going to sweat buckets and, in order to learn, endure a lot of pain.

She was attractive, despite being extremely shy and looking very “prim and proper”. While most self-defence instructors teach women to break free, strike and run, on the assumption that a woman is weaker than a man and would lose in close combat, this instructor taught women not only to defend themselves against a man, but to lose their fear of him and, literally, tear him apart.

But her first day of class was far from easy. One of the instructor’s assistants played the role of an attacker: he jumped her, took her to the ground and got on top of her. Even though she was in no real danger, she froze, her breathing quickened to the point of panic, and tears ran down her face.

The class was supposed to last an hour. After repeating this attack sequence with different people of different heights and weights, 25 minutes in, she said she couldn’t take any more and that it wasn’t what she had expected.

The thing is, most women who sign up for self-defence expect something gentler, and as a rule that’s what they get: a gradual, comfortable learning process.

The instructor stood by his method, which consisted of repeating the scene of the assault she had suffered over and over in a “controlled environment” until she lost her fear. He insisted that an attacker won’t show any mercy because a woman is shy, cries or screams. Quite the opposite: it would excite him and make him even more eager to attack her.

As Bruce Lee is supposed to have said, being a vegetarian won’t stop a lion from eating you.

She came back and kept attending classes four times a week. After six months you could see an incredible change. She walked differently, and her eyes no longer showed any shyness. She had incredible self-confidence, and she had certainly lost her fear of a man lunging at her, because if it ever came to that, the victim would no longer be her but the poor attacker.

Hundreds of kicks and punches a day, dozens of push-ups and pull-ups every day, hundreds of repetitions of moves and joint locks, hours of effort and sacrifice had turned her into a woman made of very special (and very tough) stuff.

At the other extreme were many other women who found the training too hard and never came back after the first class. Without a doubt, if someone tried to attack them, they would not be as prepared as this woman who had stuck with the master of pain.

My own start at that gym was no bed of roses either

I met that sensei when I was 16, and he put me straight onto the mat with men who practically weighed twice as much as I did. People with experience in different martial arts styles whom there was no way to approach without taking a beating.

Fortunately, the protective gear helped a bit, but it didn’t stop me spending the whole week with sore ribs, thighs and head. It was frustrating to fight people who beat you in everything: weight, muscle, agility, experience…

Even so, within just a month I was no longer only trying to defend myself so I wouldn’t get hurt. Now I was also going after my opponent’s body to try to take him down.

Even if I didn’t hurt him, the truth is that I was blocking more and more punches and getting a little further past those fighters’ guard each time.

After four months, they brought in a guy from another gym, my age, weight and height, but with two years’ experience in martial arts. Used to fighting guys who seemed like giants to me, fast and with very advanced techniques, I wasn’t the least bit afraid when I faced him. His punches felt like caresses, and his movements were very predictable.

The result: he didn’t stand a chance, even though he had been training much longer than me.

The only difference between him and me was that I had been through the master of pain.

Over time I understood that sensei’s clear strategy. The first thing he wanted was to make you lose your fear and get used to pain (which hurts less and less). Once you had overcome the fear and grown used to the pain, you could take action with much more self-confidence, and then everything became possible.

That’s why I often use martial arts as an analogy for personal and professional life.

Fear paralyses everything. Are you afraid of doing something? Do it anyway. Do you want to reach a goal, whatever it is? Get ready to work very hard and make sacrifices.

If you want to lose weight, there are no easy methods. Controlling your diet isn’t enough. You’ll have to sweat, no matter what, or your weight loss won’t be healthy.

Do you want to learn a new skill? You’ll have to be ready to put in hours and hours. In the end, whoever has prepared best is the one who masters a skill best.

If life hits you, you suck it up and keep going. If you fall, you suck it up and get back up. If you get knocked down, you suck it up and get back in the fight. You can’t win a fight just by trying not to get hurt. You win by hurting your opponent. The same goes for business. Many people are so afraid of failing that they only protect themselves from failure, but that’s not how you win the fight. Don’t just protect yourself from failure; go out and win success.

And what if you fail? That’s pain. You suck it up, get over it, and try again.

In the end, there are two kinds of people when they face a traumatic situation: those who are scarred by it and overwhelmed by the pain, and those who use that pain as a lesson.

When it comes to achieving goals in life, we also find two kinds of people: those who are willing to work hard, make sacrifices and learn whatever it takes, even literally endure pain, and those who want to achieve the same thing without going through all that. The second kind will rarely succeed, and the moment they come up against the first kind, they’ll lose.

Featured image: U.S. Army 105MPAD by Pfc. Ashunteia Smith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.