You Must Choose Short-Term Pain or You'll Automatically Get Long-Term Regret

The secret reason we fail to take important action

Image Credit-MichaelRegan/Getty

When a lover walks out the door forever, the short-term pain is enormous.

We met in my late 20s. I hadn’t been in a long-term relationship ever since I was diagnosed with mental illness. Just the idea of going on a date made me feel sick.

I bumped into her frequently while working in a call center. Then we accidentally met when I responded to a random ad of someone selling an iPad. I met up with her to pay and collect the iPad.

“Where’d you get the iPad from?”

“I used my reward points at work to buy it from the staff store.”

I immediately knew she worked for the same bank as me based on how she described the staff rewards program. Then I got her name. I realized it was the same girl from work. We dated for a long time after that.

Then suddenly it became obvious we weren’t meant to be together. But I wasn’t a quitter and I didn’t want to be single again, so I stayed in this nightmare relationship.

One day we were on our way to the city and got in a massive fight in the car.

She opened the car door in the middle of the traffic and walked out. I didn’t chase after her. She expected I would.

That’s when our love for each other ended forever.

Rip off the band-aid

Many of you have hard decisions like this to make.

You know what you must do but the short-term pain is too great. So you wait to feel ready. Or you say “someday” and transfer the responsibility of the hard decision from yourself to a future version of you that doesn’t exist.

We don’t want to change our minds because it’s an attack on our ego. The same ego that tells you that you’re right or should wait.

But unless you change your mind you can’t move forward. You’re more wrong than you want to admit. It’s okay to be wrong, just don’t stay wrong.

I’m here to tell you what you don’t want to hear. What the hell are you waiting for? This life is going to murder you. You’re not getting out of this life alive.

So…

Rip off the band-aid. Move country. Quit the job. Break up with them. Cut off the toxic best friend. Walk away from the toxic family members.

The more painful the decision, the more right you are to act on it. One moment of short-term pain, can save you a lifetime of regrets that’ll hurt worse than being left awake for open heart surgery with no pain medication.

The reason we fail to take important action

Tim Ferriss said this:

Most people have an insufficient reason for action. The pain isn’t painful enough. It’s a nice-to-have, not a must-have.

Short-term pain isn’t something to run away from.

It’s the missing ingredient for success. Unless there’s pain you likely won’t take action. And action is a decision that forces you to cut off other options and go all in on a single path.

Most people never get anywhere in life because they never freaking decide.

They stay in permanent indecision which leads nowhere and wastes away the precious hours of their life.

And they can’t see it.

Muscles don’t grow when they’re exposed to daily, comfortable exercises. No. Muscles need pain. The more the muscle is put under extreme pressure the bigger it grows. And special things in life – like diamonds – form under pressure.

Pain is free motivation. Without pain there is no growth.

Framework:

Hard now, easy later. Painful now, painless later.

The #1 law of the universe

Life and death are part of the universe. They form the foundation of nature.

If something isn’t growing it’s, by default, dying. And if you’re not experiencing short-term pain in anything you do, then by default you’re slowly dying. It’s universally impossible you can be painless, comfortable and simultaneously growing.

So how do you measure what end of the spectrum you’re on?

Author Dan Koe has the answer:

If you aren’t tired when you go to bed and excited when you wake up, you need intensity and goals.

This will upset the haters of hustle culture. They believe pain is a signal to stop, or take a rest, or go indulge in a warm bubble bath full of self-care. They’re wrong. They’re letting desires and temptation delude them into a life of mediocrity.

You’re supposed to be tired at the end of the day. Your goals should hurt and produce pain. Powerful decisions should be painful and hard to make.

If you’re not experiencing these sensations like I am, it doesn’t mean you’re a loser. No. It just means there’s an opportunity to change.

You haven’t transitioned from interests/passions/hobbies into the holy grail: obsession. Obsession is just doing what you’re already doing but with more intensity, urgency, and seriousness.

Short-term pain is an opportunity in disguise

Hard decisions feel hard in the moment.

But after the fact they feel incredible. That’s how I feel about this painful breakup I went through all those years ago. It led to a better life and wife, which gave me a beautiful baby daughter.

The takeaway here is simple: make the painful decision your gut feeling has been telling you to make. Don’t put it off any longer.

The worst thing you can do in life is stack up a mountain of silent regrets that over time come back to haunt you. Long-term regrets are different from short-term pain. They slowly kill you like a stage 1 cancer that becomes stage 4, and then terminal.

The regrets manifest themselves as:

• “I feel like I could be so much more”

• “Every day feels the same”

• “I’m bored”

• “I don’t really care about any one big thing”

These are the deadly signs…and they’re bloody common.

So stop building a mountain of regrets and start choosing short-term pain, so you can experience growth and rack up a streak of meaningful wins that transform your life (and the lives of everyone around you).

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