162. Difference Between Pain and Suffering

Foreign. Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. This is leadership in a nutshell. I might rename it. Have I mentioned that? I know I've said that a couple times and I haven't renamed it yet, but it might happen. We'll see. We'll see. Why? Because I'm talking about mental, like, control here, Mental health, releasing suffering, elevating happiness, elevating peace, becoming more joyful as a leader. That's what it's all about. Doesn't matter how much money you make, if you hate yourself, your life, your kids, your spouse. That's what. No, let's have some fun, man. That's what it's all about in this week, episode 162, the difference between pain and suffering. And I, you know, I, Suffering is a big word, right? And some of you are going, well, pain's a pretty big word too, brother. Well, yes, it is. And I, I, I wanted to just, you know, and I plan on having this as be one of our shorter episodes because I, I don't want to belabor this point. I want you to just kind of get it. Like, last, last week we talked about what you can and can't control. And, and it's important to kind of recognize the two. And today I want us to really unpack the, the reality of when something is painful and when it crosses over into suffering. So part of the human experience, and I'll say the leadership experience within the human experience is going to involve pain. We're going to have pain. We're going to have things that show up that we weren't planning on, that we weren't expecting, that we weren't prepared for, that we weren't. Fill in the blank, right? So there's going to be things that people are going to disappoint us if we have high expectations for them. And, you know, market's going to shift, economy's going to change, call counts are going to be volatile. There's all kinds of different areas for us to have pain stirred within our being. But what I really want to kind of heighten your awareness around today is around the concept of suffering. So you don't have to suffer. Like, that's the main thing is you, you, you know, do I dare say you do have to experience pain? Yeah, I'm going to say you do. I believe that at this moment you might, you do have to experience some pain in life. And, you know, some of you are challenged, like, well, you know, I read a quote once, the Buddha said, life is suffering. Well, I, I just don't believe it. Sorry. And I'm not trying to, you know, call out. I'm not talking against what any spiritual or religious leaders might, might say or whatever. But I also know that the context of the word suffering at the time that Buddha said that or that, that, you know, in that period, suffering was a little bit more around challenging or it's not the same as, as how we phrase the word. So again, not going to get into semantics here. And regardless of your belief system, I want you to take our time together on this podcast and just challenge what I say within yourself. Just bounce it off yourself. This has nothing to do with me. This has nothing to do with my beliefs. This has nothing to do with my businesses. This has nothing to do with my leadership or my leadership team. This has everything to do with you and what you're taking away and what you can gain and garner to become a better version of you. And I would say not become a better version of you. How about let's accept a better version of you because you don't have to go anywhere, you don't have to look anywhere. You already exist as the greatest version of yourself you possible. It's just time to peel back some of those layers to get to the core, that core, that authentic core. That's the core that I want and that's where I want you to step in to your greatness the most. The difference between pain and suffering. When I say that I don't believe you have to suffer, I believe that there's an agreement around suffering that, you know, we're, we're supposed to, if there's a certain, think about this. If there's a certain level of perceived pain, then there needs to be at least an experiential level of suffering as well. Like, let's, you know, I had a buddy that. I may have talked about this on the podcast before. Forgive me if I'm repeating a story. I won't tell the whole story because I feel like I did talk about it before, but I had a buddy that filed bankruptcy. 2008 or 9 it was, and, and he was a home builder and he had stretched himself based on the great economy and different things and, and had some, some challenges that took place. And he ended up losing, you know, losing his deals that he had in play and, and ultimately had to file bankruptcy. Now there's a very different bankruptcy than I bought too many, you know, Louis Vuitton bags or I bought too many Rolex watches and I had to file bankruptcy. He Was investing. He was doing his best. You know, had this. This type of thing happen. That is painful. That's very painful. I'm not going to minimize that. Bankruptcy equals pain. But pain does not have to equal suffering. In fact, pain does not equal suffering. There's another component that we're missing in order to get to suffering. So the pain is just the pain. We can just leave it right there. It's painful to have a bankruptcy. When I was working with him and helping him. We'll kind of go through that time. You know, gosh, we're going back. I hadn't even launched the blue collar success group yet at that time. And so he was working through this. So I wasn't working with clients at this level at that time, But I was helping him navigate the waters and not beat himself up and really just take ownership. I think I talked about it last week here, like, take ownership of everything that's yours and nothing that's not yours. Kind of helping him through some of those kind of mental constructs and such. And what. What I realized, and I didn't really know how to put it to words until there's a great psychologist and. Let me get her name right. Kristen Neff. She's a. She's a psychology professor and she's a psychologist. But she's. At the time we're recording this, she works at the University of Texas, and she kind of coined this algorithm, or this. Not algorithm, but like an equation, if you will, that pain times resistance equals suffering. So I have the pain of the bankruptcy. Now let's multiply that by my level of resistance, and now the output is going to be my level of suffering. And so that just blows my mind in a great way from. In a great way meaning an understandable, great way of, like, why, you know, And I've said since I got sober, like, we're not. I wasn't necessarily. Yeah, okay. I was addicted to, you know, weed and alcohol or whatever. But the bigger addiction that I had was to suffering. I was addicted to resisting my pain at such a level that I suffered. Okay, now that might be an extreme case. Bankruptcy might even be an extreme case for you. But how about you hold a training and you train your lights out, or hopefully you're a blue collar member and you use one of our trainings, or you have this. You send somebody to one of our academies and. And they come back and they're hitting it out of the park and they're doing amazing, and then they stop and you're like, well, how. Why did their results drop off? What's the deal? What's happening? Okay, now I got a trigger point of pain. I got somebody that was doing great. Now they're not. Now I have pain. Multiply that by resistance. Like, well, God, why aren't they doing it? What's the deal? I invested, I sent. I spent all this money. I. I sent them away. I sent them to training. I paid for the training, I paid for the hotel. I paid for them. You know, whatever that resistance is. Now I'm going to find my level of suffering rather than, okay, well, there's a result that I'm getting in my life that I don't want to get. Meaning I have a feeling in my life that I don't want to feel. I don't want to feel pain, and therefore I'm going to avoid it. Now, what I've learned is when I feel pain, I release it and I allow it to pass through me rather than grabbing it, holding it, keeping it, and then trying to deal with it by pouring something on it, pouring alcohol on it, pouring, you know, something else. Name all the. All the big addictions. That's all. That's all we're doing as humans. That's okay. I'm not, I'm not here to beat anybody up. I'm here to help you realize that the level of suffering that you have, and sometimes it's even just frustration. It's. It's annoyance, it's avoidance of certain conversations, certain team members, different things like that. You know, we. We just, we want to be mindful of this. So pain's going to happen, but suffering doesn't have to. And it certainly doesn't have to at the level that we generally suffer. And so, you know, I just, I really, like I said, I want to. I want to kind of keep today fairly short, but I just wanted to get this across and think about this. You know, we'll put this in show notes that you know that Kristin Neff's little equation here, suffering equals pain times resistance. So I ask you, where are you experiencing both pain and resistance? See, usually we look at, like, where am I suffering? And most of us won't use that word because, yes, words really, really matter. And that word is very emotionally charged. And emotionally charged words are scary for people. Like, I don't want to suffer. Like, one of the things that I used to avoid in my own self was if I was suffering, then that meant I'm weak. Like, strong men don't suffer. Look at me, I'm this, ah, I'm this driven entrepreneur. I haven't had a job since I was 23. I don't suffer. I'm strong. I'm strong willed. I. Oh, okay, so you don't acknowledge that you suffer, Kenny. But you bury you. You. You hold things, you bury pain, and then you know, and then you think you deal with your suffering by not. And that's just not. It's not helpful to you, it's not helpful to those around you. It's not helpful to your business, it's not helpful to your clients, it's not helpful to your family. We can keep on going. It's certainly not helpful to your finances, no matter what your coping mechanisms are. So I want you to think about, where am I having a little pain? Okay, Give it a thought. And where am I resisting things in my life? Hmm? Okay. And understand, when you multiply those two together, then you're gonna find your level of suffering. And when you realize it, you just go, well, let's see. I can't remove the pain. The pain's there. Let's say I can't change the fact that I had to go back to my buddy, I had a bankruptcy. I can't change that. I can change a lot of that in the future. I cannot minimize or. I cannot leverage myself as much. I cannot take as much risk. I can do all. But it's here. It has happened. What I can influence, what I can change is my level of resistance. And early Covid was very hard for me and put very hard in context. I didn't get sick. I didn't get severely ill. I didn't end up in the hospital. I didn't die. Like, all the things that a lot of people had take place, whatever. But I say it was very hard for me because I resisted it, man. I resisted the reality early on. And so some of you give me a head nod if you were with me a little bit. Like, I was the guy. And you might remember I was the guy that was on. I was on social media a lot back then. And so I was shooting a lot of videos daily and all the different stuff. And I was the guy. Like, give me my phone. And I've grabbed my phone and I'm like, we are not canceling our academy that's going to be live this weekend. Government won't shut us down. You know, I'm doing all that stuff. And then fast forward 24 hours and I was this guy. Yeah. You know, that academy. I said we weren't going to cancel. Yeah, that thing's been Canceled. We're not allowed. So it's like, oh, damn, I was resisting that stuff. And that created, you know, Covid was painful because it wrecked everybody's world. And then you multiply that by how much we resisted it. And then you found your level of suffering. And I have buddies today that are still suffering even though they didn't lose anybody. They didn't. They. They didn't have major health issues, their businesses got better, they're wealthier than they were before it happened. And they're still suffering because, oh, well, who caused it and what happened? My gosh, just work on yourself and pay attention to what you can focus on and what you can do. Suffering's not necessary when I'm taking on all the stuff that last week I talked about what you can and can't control. That's why I kind of wanted to tie these two episodes together. Oh, man. Just lighten up a little bit, you know? And again, I'm not minimizing. There's. There's a lot of, you know, I, I don't, I don't minimize the challenge. I don't minimize my own pain. It was. Pain is pain, no matter how you slice it, Whether it's from childhood, whether it's from how you were raised, whether it's from, you know, divorces or, you know, challenge raising children. I was running a high level group recently where everybody on the group was dealing with parenting challenges is. It's not easy. It's not easy. But if I take the pain of raising my child and multiply it by the resistance that I'm having to how they're behaving and what they're doing, then I'm going to find my level of suffering. Guess what? They're not going to act how you want them to act. Guess what? You didn't act how your parents wanted you to act. Your parents didn't act. How many generations shall we go for? You know, generations and thousands of years? Because that's the human experience. It's what it's about. Out. I'm not minimizing it again. I've said that multiple times today. I come to you with love. I come to you with positive energy. I come to you with compassion. I come to you with empathy. I come to you from a place of caring. That many people in your life, it's not that they don't care, but they're not willing to tell you the hard truth. And I'm willing to tell you the truth. And you don't have to suffer at the level that you might be suffering and you might check yourself and challenge. What kind of conversations am I having outside of work? What kind of conversations are we having inside of work? What's my leadership team's perspective like? What are we talking about? Are we talking about problems or solutions here? We talking about things we can control or things we can't control? You can't control the economy. You can control how you respond to it. You can't control the hiring pool, but you can control how you respond to it. You can't control the skilled labor deficit, but you can control how you respond to it. Focus on those things. Set yourself free. Be aware of the pain. Reduce the resistance, you automatically reduce the suffering. I'm Kenny Chapman, your host. Thank you so much for spending time with me. Do me a favor. Kick this to somebody that could use a positive shot in the arm. Maybe some truth, but a positive shot. I appreciate you. Until we talk, make it a better than fantastic week. I'll see you next time. Cheers. Sa.