If you don’t let up on yourself and instead become comfortable always operating with some level of pain, you will evolve at a faster pace. That’s just the way it is.
Every time you confront something painful, you are at a potentially important juncture in your life—you have the opportunity to choose healthy and painful truth or unhealthy but comfortable delusion.
The irony is that if you choose the healthy route, the pain will soon turn into pleasure. The pain is the signal!
Like switching from not exercising to exercising, developing the habit of embracing the pain and learning from it will “get you to the other side.” By “getting to the other side,” I mean that you will become hooked on:
· Identifying, accepting, and learning how to deal with your weaknesses,
· Preferring that the people around you be honest with you rather than keep their negative thoughts about you to them-selves, and
· Being yourself rather than having to pretend to be strong where you are weak.
– Ray Dalio
Theodore Lee is the editor of Caveman Circus. He strives for self-improvement in all areas of his life, except his candy consumption, where he remains a champion gummy worm enthusiast. When not writing about mindfulness or living in integrity, you can find him hiding giant bags of sour patch kids under the bed.