[Music]
the most important question of your life
everybody wants what feels good everyone
wants to live a carefree happy and easy
life to fall in love and have amazing
sex and relationships to look perfect
and make money and be popular and well
respected and admired and a total baller
to the point that people part like the
Red Sea when you walk into the room
everyone would like that
it’s easy to like that if I ask you what
do you want out of life and you say
something like I want to be happy and
have a great family and a job I like
it’s so ubiquitous that it doesn’t even
mean anything a more interesting
question a question that perhaps you’ve
never considered before is what pain do
you want in your life what are you
willing to struggle for because that
seems to be a greater determinant of how
our lives turn out everybody wants to
have an amazing job and financial
independence but not everyone wants to
suffer through 60 hour work weeks long
commutes obnoxious paperwork to navigate
arbitrary corporate hierarchies and be
blase confines of an infinite cubicle
hell people want to be rich without the
risk without the sacrifice without the
delayed gratification necessary to
accumulate wealth everybody wants to
have great sex and an awesome
relationship but not everyone is willing
to go through the tough conversations
the awkward silences
the hurt feelings and the emotional
psychodrama to get there
and so they settled they settle and
wonder what if for years and years and
until the question morphs from what if
into was that it and when the lawyers go
home and the alimony check is in the
mail they say what was that for if not
for their lowered standards and
expectations 20 years prior then what
for
because happiness requires struggle the
positive is the side effect of handling
the negatives you can only avoid
negative experiences for so long before
they come roaring back to life at the
core of all human behavior our means are
more or less similar positive experience
is easy to handle it’s negative
experience that we all by definition
struggle with therefore what we get out
of life is not determined by the good
feelings we desire but by what bad
feelings we’re willing and able to
sustain to get us to those good feelings
people want an amazing physique but you
don’t end up with one unless you
legitimately appreciate the pain and
physical stress that comes with living
inside a gym for hour upon hour unless
you love calculating and calibrating the
food you eat planning your life out in
tiny plate sized portions people want to
start their own business or become
financially independent but you don’t
end up a successful entrepreneur unless
you find a way to appreciate the risk
the uncertainty the repeated failures
and working insane hours and something
you have no idea whether will be
successful or not
people want a partner a spouse but you
don’t end up attracting someone amazing
without appreciating the emotional
turbulence that comes with weathering
rejections building the sexual tension
that never gets released and staring
blankly at a phone that never rings it’s
part of the game of love you can’t win
if you don’t play what determines your
success isn’t what do you want to enjoy
the question is what pain do you want to
sustain the quality of your life is not
determined by the quality of your
positive experiences but the quality of
your negative experiences and to get
good at dealing with negative
experiences is to get good at dealing
with life there’s a lot of crappy advice
out there that says you’ve just got to
want it enough everybody wants something
and everybody wants something enough
they just aren’t aware of what it is
they want or rather what they want
enough because if you want the benefits
of something in life you have to also
want the costs if you want the beachbody
you have to want the sweat the soreness
the early mornings and the hunger pangs
if you want the yonk
you have to also want the late nights
the risky business moves and the
possibility of pissing off a person or
10,000 if you find yourself wanting
something month after month year after
year yet nothing happens and you never
come any closer to it then maybe what
you actually want is a fantasy an
idealization an image and a false
promise maybe what you want isn’t what
you want
you just enjoy wanting
maybe you don’t actually want it at all
sometimes I ask people how do you choose
to suffer these people tilt their heads
and look at me like I have 12 noses but
I asked because that tells me far more
about you than your desires and
fantasies because you have to choose
something you can’t have a pain-free
life it can’t all be roses and unicorns
and ultimately that’s the hard question
that matters
pleasure is an easy question and pretty
much all of us have similar answers the
more interesting question is the pain
what is the pain that you want to
sustain that answer will actually get
you somewhere it’s the question that can
change your life it’s what makes me me
and you you it’s what defines us and
separates us and ultimately brings us
together for most of my adolescence and
young adulthood I fantasized about being
musician a rock star in particular any
badass guitar song I heard I would
always close my eyes and envision myself
up on stage playing it to the screams of
the crowd people absolutely losing their
minds to my sweet finger noodling this
fantasy could keep me occupied for hours
on end
the fantasizing continued up through
college even after I dropped out of
music school and stopped playing
seriously but even then it was never a
question of if I’d ever be up playing in
front of screaming crowds but when I was
biding my time before I could invest the
proper amount of time and effort into
getting out there and making it work
first I needed to finish school then I
needed to make money then I needed to
find the time then and then nothing
despite fantasizing about this for over
half of my life the reality never came
and it took me a long time and a lot of
negative experiences to finally figure
I didn’t actually want it I was in love
with the result the image of me on stage
people cheering me rocking out pouring
my heart into what I’m playing but I
wasn’t in love with the process and
because of that I failed out repeatedly
hell I didn’t even try hard enough to
fail at it I hardly tried at all the
daily drudgery of practicing the
logistics of finding a group and
rehearsing the pain of finding gigs and
actually getting people to show up and
give a shit the broken strings the blown
tube amp hauling 40 pounds of gear to
and from rehearsals with no car
it’s a mountain of a dream and a mile
high climb to the top and what it took
me a long time to discover is that I
didn’t like to climb much I just like to
imagine the top our culture would tell
me that I’ve somehow failed myself that
I’m a quitter or a loser self-help would
say that I either wasn’t courageous
enough determined enough or I didn’t
believe in myself enough the
entrepreneurial / startup crowd would
tell me that I chickened out on my dream
and gave in to my conventional social
conditioning I’d be told to do
affirmations or join a mastermind group
or manifest or something but the truth
is far less interesting than that I
thought I wanted something but it turns
out I didn’t end of story
I wanted the reward and not the struggle
I wanted the result and not the process
I was in love not with the fight but
only the victory and life doesn’t work
that way who you are is defined by the
values you are willing to struggle for
people who enjoy the struggles of a gym
are the ones who get in good shape
people who enjoy long work weeks and the
politics of the corporate ladder are the
ones who move up it people who enjoy the
stresses and uncertainty of the starving
artists lifestyle are ultimately the
ones who live it and make it
this is not a call for willpower or grit
this is not another admonishment of no
pain no gain this is the most simple and
basic component of life our struggles
determine our successes so choose your struggles wisely my friend
the most important question of your life
everybody wants what feels good everyone
wants to live a carefree happy and easy
life to fall in love and have amazing
sex and relationships to look perfect
and make money and be popular and well
respected and admired and a total baller
to the point that people part like the
Red Sea when you walk into the room
everyone would like that
it’s easy to like that if I ask you what
do you want out of life and you say
something like I want to be happy and
have a great family and a job I like
it’s so ubiquitous that it doesn’t even
mean anything a more interesting
question a question that perhaps you’ve
never considered before is what pain do
you want in your life what are you
willing to struggle for because that
seems to be a greater determinant of how
our lives turn out everybody wants to
have an amazing job and financial
independence but not everyone wants to
suffer through 60 hour work weeks long
commutes obnoxious paperwork to navigate
arbitrary corporate hierarchies and be
blase confines of an infinite cubicle
hell people want to be rich without the
risk without the sacrifice without the
delayed gratification necessary to
accumulate wealth everybody wants to
have great sex and an awesome
relationship but not everyone is willing
to go through the tough conversations
the awkward silences
the hurt feelings and the emotional
psychodrama to get there
and so they settled they settle and
wonder what if for years and years and
until the question morphs from what if
into was that it and when the lawyers go
home and the alimony check is in the
mail they say what was that for if not
for their lowered standards and
expectations 20 years prior then what
for
because happiness requires struggle the
positive is the side effect of handling
the negatives you can only avoid
negative experiences for so long before
they come roaring back to life at the
core of all human behavior our means are
more or less similar positive experience
is easy to handle it’s negative
experience that we all by definition
struggle with therefore what we get out
of life is not determined by the good
feelings we desire but by what bad
feelings we’re willing and able to
sustain to get us to those good feelings
people want an amazing physique but you
don’t end up with one unless you
legitimately appreciate the pain and
physical stress that comes with living
inside a gym for hour upon hour unless
you love calculating and calibrating the
food you eat planning your life out in
tiny plate sized portions people want to
start their own business or become
financially independent but you don’t
end up a successful entrepreneur unless
you find a way to appreciate the risk
the uncertainty the repeated failures
and working insane hours and something
you have no idea whether will be
successful or not
people want a partner a spouse but you
don’t end up attracting someone amazing
without appreciating the emotional
turbulence that comes with weathering
rejections building the sexual tension
that never gets released and staring
blankly at a phone that never rings it’s
part of the game of love you can’t win
if you don’t play what determines your
success isn’t what do you want to enjoy
the question is what pain do you want to
sustain the quality of your life is not
determined by the quality of your
positive experiences but the quality of
your negative experiences and to get
good at dealing with negative
experiences is to get good at dealing
with life there’s a lot of crappy advice
out there that says you’ve just got to
want it enough everybody wants something
and everybody wants something enough
they just aren’t aware of what it is
they want or rather what they want
enough because if you want the benefits
of something in life you have to also
want the costs if you want the beachbody
you have to want the sweat the soreness
the early mornings and the hunger pangs
if you want the yonk
you have to also want the late nights
the risky business moves and the
possibility of pissing off a person or
10,000 if you find yourself wanting
something month after month year after
year yet nothing happens and you never
come any closer to it then maybe what
you actually want is a fantasy an
idealization an image and a false
promise maybe what you want isn’t what
you want
you just enjoy wanting
maybe you don’t actually want it at all
sometimes I ask people how do you choose
to suffer these people tilt their heads
and look at me like I have 12 noses but
I asked because that tells me far more
about you than your desires and
fantasies because you have to choose
something you can’t have a pain-free
life it can’t all be roses and unicorns
and ultimately that’s the hard question
that matters
pleasure is an easy question and pretty
much all of us have similar answers the
more interesting question is the pain
what is the pain that you want to
sustain that answer will actually get
you somewhere it’s the question that can
change your life it’s what makes me me
and you you it’s what defines us and
separates us and ultimately brings us
together for most of my adolescence and
young adulthood I fantasized about being
musician a rock star in particular any
badass guitar song I heard I would
always close my eyes and envision myself
up on stage playing it to the screams of
the crowd people absolutely losing their
minds to my sweet finger noodling this
fantasy could keep me occupied for hours
on end
the fantasizing continued up through
college even after I dropped out of
music school and stopped playing
seriously but even then it was never a
question of if I’d ever be up playing in
front of screaming crowds but when I was
biding my time before I could invest the
proper amount of time and effort into
getting out there and making it work
first I needed to finish school then I
needed to make money then I needed to
find the time then and then nothing
despite fantasizing about this for over
half of my life the reality never came
and it took me a long time and a lot of
negative experiences to finally figure
I didn’t actually want it I was in love
with the result the image of me on stage
people cheering me rocking out pouring
my heart into what I’m playing but I
wasn’t in love with the process and
because of that I failed out repeatedly
hell I didn’t even try hard enough to
fail at it I hardly tried at all the
daily drudgery of practicing the
logistics of finding a group and
rehearsing the pain of finding gigs and
actually getting people to show up and
give a shit the broken strings the blown
tube amp hauling 40 pounds of gear to
and from rehearsals with no car
it’s a mountain of a dream and a mile
high climb to the top and what it took
me a long time to discover is that I
didn’t like to climb much I just like to
imagine the top our culture would tell
me that I’ve somehow failed myself that
I’m a quitter or a loser self-help would
say that I either wasn’t courageous
enough determined enough or I didn’t
believe in myself enough the
entrepreneurial / startup crowd would
tell me that I chickened out on my dream
and gave in to my conventional social
conditioning I’d be told to do
affirmations or join a mastermind group
or manifest or something but the truth
is far less interesting than that I
thought I wanted something but it turns
out I didn’t end of story
I wanted the reward and not the struggle
I wanted the result and not the process
I was in love not with the fight but
only the victory and life doesn’t work
that way who you are is defined by the
values you are willing to struggle for
people who enjoy the struggles of a gym
are the ones who get in good shape
people who enjoy long work weeks and the
politics of the corporate ladder are the
ones who move up it people who enjoy the
stresses and uncertainty of the starving
artists lifestyle are ultimately the
ones who live it and make it
this is not a call for willpower or grit
this is not another admonishment of no
pain no gain this is the most simple and
basic component of life our struggles
determine our successes so choose your struggles wisely my friend
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