These pithy mantras and urgent admonitions permeate the worlds of sports and fitness.  They’re everywhere: posters, tattoos, memes and ads.  Coaches and trainers swear by them.  Athletes of all levels, from the pros to the weekend warrior, breathlessly repeat them, almost as a form of prayer, to summon the motivation to get out of bed, do one more rep, or gut out the last half mile. 

People generally accept that there’s no path to improving strength and endurance without exposure to some level of physical discomfort.  Pain and suffering are part of the deal.  The desire to avoid it is why many people don’t consistently exercise.

It’s a very different story once we step off the playing field or out of the gym.  Within our culture there is an overwhelmingly powerful gravitational pull towards removing pain and discomfort from our lives.  Suffering and hardship are anathema to productivity, peace of mind and happiness, and to be avoided at all costs. 

You can see it in the relentless march of innovation.  The technologies that attract the most investment and interest are designed to reduce our workloads and provide on-demand distractions and entertainment.  The marketing messages that flood our screens appeal to our desire for comfort and freedom from stress and anxiety.

On the one hand, this is a good thing. The desire to make our lives easier and more comfortable has cured diseases, expanded our life spans, and unleashed levels of prosperity and comfort unimaginable to previous generations.  (For the record, I realize those benefits have not been evenly distributed, far from it.  But that’s a topic for another day.)

However, confining our acceptance of discomfort and pain to the gym runs counter to a fundamental reality of the human condition: no progress or growth comes without a certain measure of suffering.  It takes work, a level of physical or mental exertion, that at times is unpleasant. 

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Peak Years – A Weekly Free Blog About Growing Older and Getting Better

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It’s sounds paradoxical but it is true, one can’t achieve peace without enduring struggles.  It’s an ancient idea.  Pick a philosophy, moral code, or religion that has endured throughout the ages and in each of them you will find teachings about the importance of accepting, even embracing, suffering in our lives. 

The older we get, the more we experience suffering.  Whether it be physical or health related, the passing of friends and loved ones or unwelcome changes in our careers, the passage of time brings its inevitable share of hardships.  These traumatic events are indeed challenging and life-changing, but to a certain extent people understand that this is just part of getting old.

What I’m talking about is how we process and handle the cumulative impact of the day-to-day stresses that comes with professional life. Things like:

Commuting.

Juggling work and personal commitments.

It’s the night before a huge presentation and we’re still not satisfied with our pitch. 

The boss just tasked you to solve a difficult problem and you have no clue where to begin. 

You just sat through a difficult performance review with your manager.

The new system or process we championed isn’t delivering as expected and our team and colleagues are practically in open revolt. 

Our number one client is threatening to take their business elsewhere if we don’t meet their unreasonable demands.

And then there’s dealing with time. One of the biggest adjustments for young professionals when they enter the workforce is the sheer amount of time one spends working versus going to class.  The day in, day out nature of working five days a week (or more), even if you enjoy your job, can be a grind.

HR departments and corporate cultures have evolved significantly during my career when it comes to helping employees deal with the daily stresses and anxieties of professional life.  More vacation time, in house counseling, extended parental leaves, and hybrid work arrangements – all of these were unheard of thirty years ago. 

Thanks in no small part to the contributions and advocacy of younger workers, there is a much broader acceptance and awareness of the risks to one’s mental and emotional health from over exposure to workplace stress.  We talk more about “balance” these days more than ever before.

Yet there are times when such efforts go to far.  It can’t be, nor should it be, the goal to eliminate stress and anxiety from work entirely. 

In today’s professional culture there is a tendency to label as “toxic” or “unhealthy” the stress and anxiety that accompanies the types of scenarios described above.  Their mere existence, the fact that employees must endure these sorts of things represents to some an inexcusable insensitivity among corporate leaders, or perhaps even some larger inherent flaw in our capitalist system.   

However, the reality is that there is no avoiding these stresses.  They are an inevitable part of work.  Whether it’s done in an office, at home, a library late at night on a college campus, or outside, work is supposed to challenge us.  Some measure of suffering is integral to the experience.  It can’t be legislated away through corporate policy, nor can workers be wholly shielded from it no matter how many mental health days one takes. 

I’ll go one step further.  Merely accepting that at some point we must endure professional challenges and obstacles is just the first step.  Just like the runner or weightlifter understands that to improve they must “embrace the burn”, we must learn to welcome these challenges.  Those who succeed learn how to use stress to ignite their ambition and ingenuity. 

The brain is a muscle.  Without exerting it beyond our comfort zone, we can’t grow intellectually or emotionally.  Avoiding or ducking stress only robs ourselves of a chance to get better.  Sometimes we may not be up to the challenge.  We don’t nail the presentation or the client meeting despite our best efforts.  That’s ok, the point is we accepted the opportunity to struggle and didn’t run from the test. 

Of course, failing hurts, but it’s not really a test if there’s no risk of not passing.  And if there’s nothing to lose, than winning feels empty as well.  No ambitious professional who seeks to make an impact should want such a thing. 

I want to be very clear, just like in the gym it’s unwise and potentially dangerous to attempt to lift weights above our capacity, continued exposure to excessive levels of stress and anxiety in our professional lives is profoundly unhealthy.  Some situations are indeed truly toxic and debilitating.  Our careers are not meant to be an exercise in masochism.  If that’s your reality, you should seek help immediately and find a way out.

But reflexively avoiding the inevitable stresses that comes from doing things that challenge us is also hazardous to one’s long-term success and happiness.  The bottom line is if you’re not prepared to embrace a measure of suffering in your career, you will never achieve your full potential.  That may sound harsh, but it’s also life.  The opportunity to test ourselves, to succeed, and also to fail sometimes, to suffer – these are the things that give meaning to our professional efforts and, in the end, the only path to finding fulfillment.

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Burning Ambitions – The Perfect Summer Beach Read