There is good pain and bad pain. You want the kind of pain you get from going running, not the kind you get from stepping on a nail.
Paul Graham – Taste for Makers
Pain is good, or so certain types of people like to tell us. No pain, no gain. Right?
Well, in my experience, this is every now and then true. But the longer I live, the more I come to the conclusion that whilst useful pain certainly does exist, most pain is just that – pain. And it’s honestly a failure of the English language that we still use the same word to describe such wildly varying phenomena.
Some pain, when accepted and embraced as a challenge, makes you come alive, makes you stronger, makes you wiser, makes you more you than you ever were before. Seek out this kind of pain and throw yourself into it.
The other kind of pain? Slows you down? Gets in your way? Fucks you up? Run from it. Don’t waste your precious time on it. Avoid anybody who tries to convince you its good for you.