Choose Your Suffering Wisely.

Suffering is unavoidable.

It’s an inescapable part of life, an aspect that is burned into the fabric of time and space.

Yet, despite the unavoidable nature of suffering, people will always try their damn best to avoid it.

Maybe they think it’s bad. Maybe they think it’s unnecessary.

But it’s neither of those things.

Something that is (in that it exists and we can do nothing to change that) cannot be good nor bad.

If you breathe in too much carbon dioxide - you will suffer and die.

Yet this doesn’t make carbon dioxide bad, nor unnecessary - in fact, it’s entirely necessary to regulate your breathing and for plants to survive.

Carbon dioxide, like suffering, is, and therefore it can’t be strictly labeled as good or bad, it’s context-dependent.

And it doesn’t matter how hard you try, you can’t avoid suffering - mainly because of 2 reasons;

1. Every decision has trade-offs and therefore suffering

2. Suffering exists on a scale.

If you decide to eat junk food, your health, energy, and recovery will suffer.

In the short term, this suffering is small, practically negligible depending on how much you value your energy, but if you repeatedly decide to suffer in this way, you’ll ruin your health, your energy, and your quality of life - a greater amount of suffering.

So suffering exists and it exists on a scale from the tiny suffering of stubbing your toe on the corner of your bed to the massively inconceivable levels of suffering in the form of atrocities.

The suffering you endure will shape you into who you are.

No matter the scale, it’s impactful and chisels away at your shape, creating a sculpture that represents your suffering.

You can’t avoid it.

Each decision, each action, and each event is like the chisel and you are the statue.

But, what most people don’t realise is that you are also the sculptor that holds the chisel.

The vast, vast majority of the suffering you will experience in your life is chosen by you.

Every decision and every action has a consequence.

You can choose to suffer mindlessly with bad habits, vices, and distraction.

This will shape your life in a certain way.

You’ll, over time, become depressed and anxious, you’ll have no physical, time, location, or financial freedom.

You’ll live a “normal” life.

I don’t have a problem with people living an average life, that is their decision to make, but my problem is that the average person hates their damn life, they’re living with potential untapped.

A massive reason for this is that they try to run from suffering and avoid it.

They view suffering as painful, which it is, but fail to see that no matter what you do, suffering is waiting in the depths.

And so they mindlessly go through life, subconsciously putting themselves through a useless pain for no beneficial outcome.

They don’t realise that their bad habits, vices and distraction are a form of suffering - but one that does nothing for you.

They don’t realise that they can choose to suffer purposefully with big goals, discipline and meaningful work.

Suffering for a reason. For a beneficial outcome that creates results that are worth having, for a life that they would love.

The suffering you choose dictates your outcomes in life.

You can either mindlessly suffer and live a life that you hate, lying in bed full of anxiety and guilt.

Or you can purposefully suffer and live a life of physical, mental, location, time and financial freedom - a life that you love.

Remember, suffering is inescapable.

It will always find you. 

It will always be waiting for you.

But the result of your suffering is up to you, whether it’s meaningful, productive, and useful or mindless, soul-destroying and an attempt to avoid the unavoidable realities of suffering being a part of life.

Just look around you.

Look at those who purposefully suffer through goals, hard work, and ambition, and then look at those who try to run from the inescapable fact that you must suffer - whose life would you rather live?

A Quick Interruption:

You have 2 choices when it comes to suffering.

These choices can be boiled down to;

1. Suffer mindlessly

2. Suffer beneficially

Beneficial suffering is a tough concept to wrap your head around - but the goal of this email is to help you understand that suffering will happen and that suffering can positively impact you if you choose your suffering wisely.

As hard as this can be to understand, it’s harder to implement - especially over the long term.

My recommendation?

Build your discipline and chase Self-Mastery so that you can do what you know you need to do - no matter what.

If you want to build your discipline and chase Self-Mastery, click here to enroll in MasteryOS.

Choose Your Suffering Wisely. 

As always, no matter how philosophical I get in these emails, I always like to give you some actionable advice that you can follow to implement what we go over.

So if you want to stop mindlessly suffering and start suffering for a beneficial reason, here’s how to choose your suffering wisely;

Train Hard

Working out is the definition of beneficial suffering.

You actively go to a place dedicated to putting your mind and body to the test, pushing yourself, and breaking down your muscles all because you want to get bigger and stronger.

There are few other places on earth dedicated to suffering wisely like the gym.

And that’s not to mention all the decisions you have to make outside the gym to maximise the result of your time in the gym - the good food, the prioritising sleep, etc.

Plus, no other habit creates results that ripple into every area of your life like working out.

It’s the gateway to self-improvement.

You train hard, get bigger and stronger, look better, feel better, have more confidence, and more energy and both understand and appreciate delayed gratification and the meaning of suffering wisely.

If you’re new to the gym, there are plenty of free resources on Youtube to get you started - I’d recommend checking out Jeff Nippard and Mike Israetel.

But some basic principles to get you started;

• Train every muscle group at least 1x per week

• Compound lifts should form the basis of all your sessions

• Progressively overload by doing more reps or more weight each week

• Train hard

• Prioritise recovery

Set Big & Meaningful Goals 

When you set a goal correctly, it creates both responsibility and meaning in your life.

How?

A goal is something you don’t already have and can’t just get right now - otherwise, it wouldn’t be a goal.

If it’s something you can’t get right now, it means you have to improve in certain areas (and likely all areas) to achieve that goal.

It requires you to rise to the standards necessary of you to achieve it.

And since it’s something you want, so long as you truly want to achieve it - no matter the reason however deep or shallow - you have a responsibility to respect yourself enough to go and get it.

This responsibility creates meaning.

But this improvement that’s required of you to achieve your goal requires a part of your current self to die to make way for your new, improved self.

THIS IS SUFFERING.

But this suffering is beneficial and meaningful as you’ll achieve that thing you’ve set your sights on.

Essentially, there is no wiser method of suffering than setting big and meaningful goals - especially since, as a human, you’re going to, either consciously or subconsciously, set goals no matter what.

Now if you want your goal to be set correctly it has to meet a few criteria;

• It’s big (reasonably unreasonable)

• It’s specific and with a deadline (I want to lose weight -> I want to lose 20lbs in 20 weeks)

• It will push you toward your life vision (your dream life, dream schedule and becoming all you could be - which if you don’t know these things, get to know them)

Know What You Want In Life, What You Need To Do To Get There and Accept Nothing Less of Yourself

As you likely know by now, I’m a massive proponent of creating a life vision.

This requires you to ask yourself a few questions;

• What does my dream life look like?

• What does my dream schedule look like?

• If I could be all I could be, what would that look like?

• What do I need to do to get there?

The answer to the last question can and should be split into 2 sections;

1. Goals

2. Standards

We already covered how goals are a wise form of suffering, but goals are longer term (still generally short term in the grand scheme of things, but definitely longer term than standards)

Standards are in your day-to-day.

They’re things you view as non-negotiable, that you expect of yourself and that will drive you toward becoming all you could be and achieving the goals you’ve set.

These can be the likes of;

• Working out

• Eating clean

• Doing 4 hours of deep work

Or even;

• Not letting your bank account go below x

• Not letting your body weight go above y

Standards are decisions you consciously make of what to expect from yourself.

And since decisions always involve some sort of suffering, so will your standards.

But nobody has standards that are less than their best, everybody’s standards are at their edge, which means if you meet your standards, you will constantly be rising to your best, hence, making a decision to rise to your best which, since it’s at your best, will be beneficial - a wise, beneficial form of suffering.

Now you might think “But some people don’t have standards on their edge, they have low standards”.

I would disagree.

Their standards might seem low relative to yours or maybe, likely, they don’t rise to their standards and hence, it looks like their standards are low.

Nobody has low standards.

Everybody has standards that demand their all, most people suffer by not rising to meet them - you, however, can suffer wisely and beneficially, if you choose to rise to meet them at every step of the journey.

Make Sacrifices 

Every decision is suffering - we have gone over this already.

But why do decisions have to involve suffering?

Well, in a decision you choose 1 thing over another - you actively sacrifice 1 of the options.

If you choose to go to the gym, you sacrifice the opportunity to sit on the couch and watch Netflix.

If you choose to sleep in and then scroll TikTok in bed, you sacrifice the opportunity to win the morning.

With every decision, you make a sacrifice and hence, suffer the consequence.

Whether that consequence is positive or negative is entirely dependent on your choice.

Understand that because suffering is unavoidable, so are sacrifices.

If you want to suffer beneficially, you will need to sacrifice what benefits you less.

So if you want to suffer wisely, choose what you will sacrifice and make the damn choice before the choice is made for you by your mindless, primal, cheap dopamine-seeking brain.

Okay, so we went over quite a big and influential concept in this email.

We covered a lot.

But if you take away anything, make it this;

Your chosen suffering shapes you.

- Ross.

And when you’re ready, here’s how I can help you:

• Achieve Self-Mastery, unlock your true potential, and smash every goal you set with MasteryOS

• Join the waitlist for cohort 2 of Done In 4

• Learn how to build a multi-6-figure audience and business with Personal BrandBldr