Should we avoid pain?

It’s a strange question. On one hand, yes of course we should avoid pain. Things hurt as a signal that they are not good for us. But if we go around avoiding all pain, we’ll never try anything hard, tough, or difficult. If we do that, we’ll never accomplish anything worth talking much about – we’ll never reach our potential.

While we don’t want anymore pain than necessary, and we don’t want the emotional pain that comes from self-torment and misusing our minds, pain is often a right of passage to great achievement.