Joy (No Pain, No Gain)

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Just the other day, I was reading something that defined joy as, “the internal satisfaction we feel when we pursue well-being and success, even through great difficulty…it differs from happiness in that it can be present during difficult times.”

I thought back to some of the reading that I have done and what it has said about success and difficulty. In chapter 1 called “Thoughts Are Feelings” of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, he told the story of a man succumbing to gold fever. He found some gold but, when he tried to locate the vein of gold that he had lost, he was unsuccessful. As the man thought that the mine was all tapped out, he sold it. The new owner contacted a mining engineer, who was able to discover that the lost vein was just three feet from where the previous owner quit. Had he continued, the previous owner would have rediscovered the vein of gold, if he had a vision for what he was doing and how he was going to do it.

For something more contemporary, I think about David Goggins’ memoir, Can’t Hurt Me. In his book, Goggins wrote about going through BUD/S training to become a Navy Seal, but then having to go through it again so that he could recover from a broken kneecap. During his second and last time attempt at BUD/S, he found out that his “shins were slivered with small fractures.” To make it through training, he made a makeshift soft cast out of duct tape and socks to provide the necessary support. If you’re wondering, why he would do that to himself: Goggins was trying to transcend some pretty serious emotional baggage from an abusive childhood and lack of self-belief by proving that he could join one of the most elite of US special forces branches. His strengthened self-belief and “calloused mind” (term that he used repeatedly in the book) is what carried him through, when men, who should have lasted, didn’t.

These are just two stories about how something good is possible only after going through something challenging or, in Goggins’ case, nearly impossible. In the case of the original mine owner, he wasn’t able to persevere and failed to achieve financial well-being and professional success in mining, even though he was only 3 ft away from finding gold again. In Goggins’ case, he was able to become a Navy Seal only after firmly anchoring his goal and letting not a broken kneecap nor multiple fractures in his shins get in the way of completing BUD/S training. Goggins found his joy, while the original mine owner fell very short.

Please don’t think that I’m saying that challenges or suffering are an absolute requirement for success. It’s not. However, with this being said, you can and will encounter challenges. When this happens, you should not back down but clearly establish your what and why so that you can be your own David Goggins and not the mine owner. If you want something bad enough, nothing short of total defeat will stop you.

As my new phone and computer screensaver says, “Stand by to get some.” So go out there and get what’s yours.

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