Most of us believe in the motto “no pain, no gain.”  But if we truly believed in “no pain, no gain,” then all of us would go around trying to find some pain.  We would view the pain as just a means of getting more of what we wanted, more gain.  Three little words would always be on our lips: Bring the pain!  Yet, I don’t know too many people who are out there looking for pain.  Why not?  I have the answer…and it may shock you!

Sometimes, very infrequently, but sometimes we do go looking for pain.  We do this only when we have a very clear objective in mind.  We will only seek the pain when something becomes so important in our minds that we are able to ignore the pain it takes to achieve it.  There is one such goal that has inspired every one of us at one point in our lives to seek out the pain.  Vanity.  From personal experience, I can tell you that men are vain.  At one point in my life, my vanity was readily apparent in my workout regimen.  I wanted a chest as wide as a Mack truck.  I wanted biceps as big as cannonballs.  And I would work out six days a week, two hours a day to get there.  Why?  The ladies.  One day, I worked out so hard that my arm went into a spasm and I involuntarily punched myself in the face.  True story!  Was I deterred?  No.  All of those workouts actually worked.  And I had three words running through my mind.  Bring the pain!

Ladies, don’t think you are exempt.  I’ve seen you go looking for pain in the name of fashion.  I have seen you pluck, wax, tweeze, and force your five toes into a space made for two.  I’ve seen it!  I have seen you go into preparation mode for “the big event,” a wedding, a high school reunion or the like.  You wanted to make the whole room jealous when they saw you.  So you started working out and went on a diet that would starve a rabbit.  You went looking for the pain.  Then one morning, you were getting ready for work and happened to glance at the mirror. You liked what you saw.   You almost couldn’t believe that you were looking at your own reflection.  Then, three little words ran through your mind.  Bring the pain!

Even if the goal is something trivial like vanity, we are generally successful when we are willing to ignore the pain required to achieve something worth achieving.  Yet most of us do not go looking for pain.  We leave it up to chance.  We allow our pain to find us.  It is only in retrospect that we realize that the challenges we faced gave us a tremendous opportunity for growth and made us better at something.  Upon further review, we are often grateful that we went through that situation, no matter how terrible.  Every one of us has examples in our own lives when the pain was beneficial.  So, if we know that pain is good for us, why don’t we go looking for it?  I have the answer.  21. 

21?  Yes, 21!  Twenty-one is the number of days it takes for an action or a practice to become a habit.  It takes twenty-one days to make it stick.  But in these twenty-one days, our faith is tested.  When we don’t see results on Day 1, 2, 3 or 4, we start to question whether the pain is worth it.  We ponder quitting, no matter how great the reward for persevering.  Twenty-one days is just long enough to sort out the contenders from the pretenders.  It is just long enough to run off those people who were hoping for change in their lives, but not really believing that change would come. 

When we survive the twenty-one days, the benefit is immeasurable.  We begin to build a track record of achieving at a high level.  We use this experience to get more and more ambitious in the future.  We use that “winning feeling” to fuel future greatness and recover quickly from future failures, enabling yet more greatness.  We realize that there are only two possible outcomes from great struggle: the thrill of victory and the knowledge that you can survive the failure.  Both position you for more success if you let them.  Surviving the twenty-one days makes us better. 

Unfortunately, when we fall short of the twenty-one days, the opposite happens.  We don’t get that “winning feeling.”  The practice never becomes a good habit.  You revert back to the bad one.  Each failure takes a greater toll on your confidence.  It becomes harder and harder for you to recover from failure.  But something more damaging happens as well.  You build a track record of failed attempts in which there was all pain and no gain.  You run the risk of being unwilling to try the next time.  That is the greatest risk of all.