Pain and Pleasure 🧠!!️

Today’s word count: 659

Estimated read time: 4 min 11 sec.

Quote 1:

“Physics are the only laws, everything else is a suggestion.”

- Elon Musk (innovator, entrepreneur, visionary)

How often have you heard from your closest ones—people who mean nothing but good for you—that something you want to do or achieve is simply not possible? Take a moment and think about it...

Now, how often have you questioned that assumption instead of accepting it as fact? Reflect on that...

And how often have you actually gone on to achieve what you initially believed you could do? Probably not as often as you would have if you had support around you.

Say what you will about Elon Musk, but he certainly has one great approach to everything he does—he questions the established ways. Sometimes, you might conclude that the way things are is indeed the best way. But more often than not, the opposite is true.

After all, we create the rules we live by. And since we build them, we can also rebuild and change them. At the end of the day, only the laws of nature are absolute—everything else is a choice.

Quote 2:

“Be really careful what you work on. Because everything can be optimized endlessly.”

- Peter Thiel (investor, strategist, contrarian)

Building on the quote above, we should also be mindful of where we spend our time, what we choose to optimize, and to what extent. After all, there’s only so much tradeoff we can afford in the endless pursuit of optimization before we start overdoing it.

If you’re optimizing for health, great—you should. But do you want it to consume your entire life, never allowing yourself to enjoy a slice of pizza and a beer with friends? Or if you're developing an app, are you so fixated on perfecting one minor feature—one that no one even notices—that you lose sight of the bigger picture?

Optimization is valuable, yes, but so is maintaining perspective and keeping your greater goal in sight. Don’t get stuck on the little things at the expense of the bigger picture.

Quote 3:

“Excellence is the capacity to take pain.”

- David Senra (podcaster, historian, storyteller)

Uhhh, this one really resonates with my personality—haha.

If evolution has taught you anything, it’s that pain is bad and pleasure is good. Now, if you were living thousands of years ago, I would completely agree with this approach—back then, pleasure was scarce and hard to find. However, in today’s world, where pleasure and dopamine hits are abundant, you need to make a proactive and conscious decision to fight back. And yes, this precisely means shifting your focus toward pain.

If you think about it, pain is often what brings real joy and contentment. It’s the pain of enduring physical activity and maintaining a disciplined diet that stands between you and the body you want to live in. It’s the pain of hard work that separates you from the success you want in your career. It’s the pain of navigating challenges in relationships that ultimately leads to deep, meaningful connections with those around you.

Pain is good—if it’s deliberate and well-dosed. Don’t shy away from it. On the other side of pain is the amazing life you want to live.

Take a moment today to reflect on where you could embrace more discomfort in your life—pushing yourself a little further out of your comfort zone and one step closer to the person you want to become.

At the end of the day, there is no such thing as a true status quo. Things change—always, constantly. And so will you. The question is: in which direction?

Share your thoughts by replying to this email or leaving a comment. I’d love to hear your take on it, and I’m sure the community would benefit from it as well.

Until next week…

Love you, Igor