The purpose of pain.

And how to handle it.

Pain serves a purpose. First, it could be good pain or bad pain.

Good pain is like the one that we feel while working out. That indicates that we are making progress. Similar pain is felt, in the form of fear and anxiety, when we are making progress professionally. The good pain is an indicator that we should continue doing what we are doing.

Then there is another pain that serves a totally different purpose. The bad pain. The pain in the joints or the pain that our mind creates when we are not working on something important or urgent. The purpose of this pain is to indicate that an intervention is needed.

This post is about dealing with the bad pain, especially in context of our work. The bad pain in that case is generally felt in the form of guilt. It presses on the walls of our brain but we can become used to having it there. Due to inertia, we keep doing what we are doing without releasing this pain.

To release it, we need to do the extremely difficult task of pausing the momentum of our day to day and initiate an ‘Intentional break’ to take requisite action to relieve the pain.

It is much more effective to climb a mountain without having pebbles in your shoes.