Chad Silverstein argues for choosing short-term acute pain to escape long-term chronic misery. He uses physical rehab and workplace conflict as examples, emphasizing the challenge zone just beyond comfort where excellence lives, and recommends gradual, coached exposure to difficult tasks for sustained growth.
Chapters
This is probably one of the most major themes that you'll kind of hear in the build to lead framework, and that is the choosing of acute pain. It's a big deal with trying to get out of chronic pain, right? And this is why Chet always uses the example. It's even in his day for himself. But if you have chronic back pain, the only way to get out is to go to rehab and put yourself in acute pain to get out of the chronic pain. And you see this show up in your life in pretty much every which way. From having conflict with individuals, ignoring the hard conversation you need to have with somebody, something you've suppressed for quite some time that just won't go away. And that's what we mean when we say that pain is inevitable and misery is a choice. Like, if you're just going to delay those things, you know, you have conflict with someone at work, or you're a boss or you're a leader and you need to get rid of someone, and you haven't, and you've just. Just put it off, or you've been, you know, worried about not getting a raise and you're just too scared to go talk to your boss. The longer that you wait, you're literally choosing to be miserable, and it's inevitable that you're going to just have to deal with it anyways. And the longer you wait, the worse it's going to be. And most of the time, just ripping off the band aid and doing something really hard, it's never as hard as you think it's going to be. And when it is, it's still probably worth it because sometimes it just has to happen. So why delay it? And what's crazy about that is when you really think about it, intellectually understanding that concept is very easy. But when you're going through it, it's hard to do it because you actually have to choose the. The hard stuff. And it's much easier to not. But ironically, you're actually delaying and you're just gonna delay the pain that you're gonna be in. And that makes no sense. But because, again, we're human, you know, you just have to just know that that's our tendency is to avoid pain. And so any leader who can put themselves in acute pain, or they choose it knowing that that's what they're gonna have to have, and that's what they're gonna have to experience in order to keep going, to get further, to rise above, to get past something, you know, working out your muscles, you just. You get Stronger. And you get stronger, and you get stronger. I mean, look, one of our. One of our best clients, Tom Ryan, you know, he wrote a book about this chosen suffering. And I think, you know, there is something to be said about, you know, being a little too comfortable and sitting in that little comfort zone that we talk about, a build to lead and having to push yourself. Or more importantly, because it's hard to do it when you're by yourself. But to have a builder, a coach, a friend, a loved one put you in the challenge zone, if you can do it yourself and kick your own ass, that's even better. But you have to be in the challenge zone, and you have to find that happy medium between the comfort zone and being in chaos. You know, the other side of chaos. Because excellence, and we say this in build to lead, you'll hear it over and over. Excellence is found just on the side of chaos because we're constantly being challenged. We don't go in the deep end, and we don't sit in that comfort zone too long. And in order to be in that challenge zone, you have to be uncomfortable. You have to choose to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And you have to identify those areas where you want to grow and know that the only way for you to grow and to break through that comfort zone and to kind of expand it is to choose something uncomfortable. And it's just not the normal thing to do. It's just not. It's not, you know, so innate to be able to just choose something tough. And Chet talks about it today and about his workouts, and I've been part of those workouts, and they are hard. They are chosen, suffering, for sure. And I think, you know, you can show this up, though, anywhere in your life, you know, personally, professionally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, you name it. And you have to pick something hard. So don't go off the deep end. Pick something easy that you can do to start. You can gradually pick up steam and pick up the harder stuff, but get a taste of being uncomfortable knowing that there's just light on the other side, that you're going to be able to taste that, you know, if you rinse and repeat that process, you see crazy, crazy growth. And that's what we're after, right? That's what the builder's journey is all about. So you can either choose it now or you can just deal with the inevitable down the road. Your choice. And it is true when they say your choices have consequences. So true.
