Suffering Toward Success

“Of many books, a reader thinks this could have been truly great, if only the author had been willing to suffer a little bit more…”

-Alain de Botton

No excitement matches that of embarking on a fresh journey; beginning a new challenge in life, starting the hike up the mountain of ambition. In my nerdy youth, selecting a new videogame to conquer was akin to a new mountain to scale. I remember departing school on Fridays, sans-weekend plans or homework, practically begging my parents to take me to Blockbuster or Hollywood Video to rent a game—more than likely an RPG—and being elated at the thought of spending the next 48 hours in my cave, “working my butt off” to rescue a princess, save the world, and/or duel some wizard.  Without mainstream review websites to cross check titles against critical acclaim, I walked into those rental stores armed exclusively with the most rudimentary of gauges— the naked, all-judging eye, which I’d employ to analyze the display box arts of available games, and find the quest that spoke to me the most (ie, “looked the coolest”). I was magnetized by a strong first impression on the cover—perhaps a sharp-looking logo with the main character/s, depicted in some type of action pose (the iconic image of Cloud and his Buster Sword staring down the evil Shinra Headquarters is engrained in my brain forever)—and would then turn the case around to see what I could deduce from the backside. Typically, this would be a highlight reel of the game’s finest moments—thumbnails of new-age cutscene graphics, a mid-battle special attack, a written summary describing the story to sound epic, and a quote from some handpicked gamer magazine proclaiming it to be a “10/10, greatest game of all time!” Consider me sold; the weekend journey was ready to commence…

When we consider the aspirations we vie to chase in life, we’re essentially examining the ‘box art’ of real-world goals, and the first impression building-process isn’t so different—the shiny cover is our romanticism of the identity the journey will give us, while the opposite side lets us imagine the highlights of the thrills ahead—the events, people, places we’re going to encounter, as well as the battles and challenges we’ll fight along the way. In our excitement, we build the expectation that it’s going to be a ‘10/10, greatest life-changing-expedition-of-all-time!’ We psyche ourselves up—we’re pumped for the chase ahead; even the work, honestly! We know it’s going to be a long trek, with tough stages, and at times we’ll miss our simplistic pre-journey lives, the humble home-town roots of Burg, Iselia, or Onett; but the promise presented on the back of the box and epicness radiated from the cover is too appealing to let any moments of hesitation prevent us from embarking. We’re ready for action, prepared to battle, and enthused for the process. But what we never envision—and what neither video game nor life’s box arts ever depict—is the real adversity ahead; the mental warfare that takes place when we find ourselves complacent, overworked, and underwhelmed. We consistently fail to anticipate the true suffering—the psychological fatigue that, depending on our reaction, will either crush our spirit, soul, and save file…or boost our resolve, recharge our desire, and send us to unprecedented heights of success…

THE FETCH QUEST

  “The gate key to Mount Destiny? Are you sure?! It’s dangerous up there…But, I suppose if anybody can handle it, it’s you, Hero. I can give you the key… First, though, I unfortunately seem to have misplaced my favorite recipe book— If you can find it for me, I’ll gladly give you the key to the mountain pass.” This simple request sends a collective groan across gamers worldwide. You’ve invested weeks into this voyage already, trucking along through forests and dungeons in hopes of saving the planet from some impending apocalypse/meteor/time compression, uncovering the mysterious slave-crown/mako/junction reason behind your main character’s memory loss, and slay the insane court mage/ex-SOLDIER/sorceress…when all that momentum comes to a screeching halt. Why? Because some random village mayor informs you that the ‘key’ to continuing your adventure is going to require a bit of a narrative detour—all for some arbitrary book of culinary creations. This ‘find the book’ showstopper appears in RPGs via multiple different forms—it could be a missing family heirloom, stolen chickens from a farm, or the one part a mechanic is short on stock—which happens to be the one gizmo he needs to fix your broken-down air ship. Tough luck. Equally popular is the ‘do me a favor and I’ll help you move on’ tasking: The sewers are infested with rats or other mutants, and the town’s infrastructure relies on your valiance to clean house and rid the vermin. Perhaps the city’s adventurous-yet-mischievous child, always exploring those dangerous nearby ruins despite his parents’ warnings, has been missing for days—and who better to rescue him than a complete stranger to these residents? This kind of insignificant, out-of-left-field plot filler drives gamers crazy with eye-rolling frustration. It’s the kind of random tasking that, after you’ve already invested so many hours toward a game and are ready for a big payoff already, makes you want to throw your hands up and say “Screw this—this isn’t fun, nor worth it, anymore…”

            What makes starting a journey “worth it” anyway? Why would someone embark on a quest that assuredly leads to mind-numbing level grinding and artifact chasing? In my illustrious JRPG career, it was without a doubt the plot: There was something magical about a fresh, engaging storyline in a videogame—one of the centerpieces of any good RPG. Learning a new world, its lore, the main players, etc– and watching the conflict develop to the point where you and your cast of supporting party members were the final hope for the ancient land…it was like a drug for my imagination. If a game told an epic tale with strong contributing personalities, the amplifying gameplay mechanics hardly even mattered—I was hooked. Hell, even now, I can’t resist becoming captivated by a blockbuster narrative and hanging around to see how it unfolds. I’d become invested in the characters and their progressions, turning “I’ll just play for an hour or so” into extended marathons of gaming, because I simply could not wait to see what would happen next. Traveling across the world in search of the legendary sword that only the true hero could wield, uncovering more about those strange flashbacks from the main character’s amnesiac past, storming the villain’s floating castle at the eleventh hour, just as their scheme for world domination was about to take place—I couldn’t get enough of it. And then, inevitably, one of these types of book-finding, sewer-cleaning, ruins-exploring quests would stand in my way: The Fetch Quest. What gamers see as the game designer’s contrived way to introduce some petty and inconsequential conflict from thin air, purely to add hollow hours of story that would artificially lengthen a journey. The quests change, but the model stands true: Sideshow characters that you’d never hear from again, story arcs that had no bearing on the main plot’s resolution…just various forms of narrative parasites that suck away the energy cultivated through the epic adventure thus far. By the time you’ve hunted down the merchant—whom the mayor last remembers lending the book to—who lost it to a traveling gambler at a port city miles away, who sold it to a priest at an auction, which got looted by a band of brigands, who ultimately have it hidden in their secret cavern lair, which gets taken over by a flesh-hungry dragon who happens to trundle in just as you get your hands on the book—-you get the picture; You can’t even remember why you needed the book in the first place. You’re motivationally depleted. That initial enthusiasm sparked within you, that desire to save the world no matter what kind of adversity and struggles encountered?  Vanished. A grand adventure has now become an epic nuisance.

Fetch quests are the worst in games—not because we’re against being the hero that people need, but because we’ve typically spent so much time in this virtual version of the hero’s quest that we’re mentally drained by these repeated patterns, and ready for something fresh. We’re tired of cleaning up these annoying sub-plots, and as we get fatigued from the steps of the journey, we become more selfish with our time, lazy with our work ethic, and impatient with task assignment. The novelty of this quest has worn off, and now that we’re ready for the grand finale of this chronicle, we instead feel like we’re just being fed meaningless chores—and we’re so over it all. How can these townspeople keep giving me these ridiculous item hunts? Can nobody else settle the long-standing political dispute in this village? Am I really the only one who is capable of finding and confronting the thief who’s been harassing this city? In your bubble of task exhaustion, you start to see patterns to the game, and you aren’t a fan of the monotony that has interrupted a once-engaging and invigorating story arc. The top of the mountain is lonely; it’s also bitterly cold, and painfully dreary. The true suffering has arrived: your internal, mental struggle with ‘process fatigue’. It’s an uncomfortable feeling that has you contemplating giving the middle finger to this quest out of spite and lack of additional energy to expend. If these villagers are so oblivious to how much they’re burdening me…how much I’ve already given…how worn out I am from the dealing with the same rigors over and over again…then maybe I don’t feel like saving this planet after all…

When I finally retired from the full-time job with the controller and began taking interest in tackling some ‘real life’ aspirations, it didn’t take long to realize that “fetch quests” and “process fatigue” are not just videogame quirks — IRL, the regression of a passion becoming a chore is all too familiar, and even more insufferable. Life’s adventures are not constant, linear paths of progression with electrifying and action-packed scene after scene. Our own narratives throw us plenty of cliched detours, frustrating backtracks, and for lack of a better phrase, tons of stuff we just flat out don’t want to do. Eventually I realized that while the dramatic love stories, epic clashes with rivals, and soaring the skies aboard dragons were things of fantasy…the headache-inducing, under-stimulating task-assignments set to crush your patience were reality-driven plot elements borrowed straight from mankind. So, was this life’s big plot twist, then? That it would run the same course as videogames—exciting new adventures to undergo, eventually marred by frustration through suffering as they degraded into those fetch quests that induce so much bitterness? To a lot of people, yes, that is life—Barely staying afloat, neglecting fulfillment, just surviving; Boss to boss, dungeon to dungeon, severely underleveled and on the verge of a Game Over whenever a robust test of work ethic blindsides them. But the encouraging and fascinating hero’s redemption story is that suffering through a process that begins to feel like a chore is the richest source of experience points you can gain toward enhancing a fundamental character attribute — Resiliency. The trait that will be crucial in reaching uncharted heights of life’s mountain, and will provide you the spirit needed to survive at those great elevations. Ultimately, it is the level of effort and investment you bring when you encounter the ‘fetch quests’ of life that determines your max level for resiliency, and makes all the difference for whether you’re the fabled hero at the end, or just another regret-burdened villager wondering what could’ve been…

FROM ZONING TO SUFFERING

             The box arts of video games and life’s quests are important in allowing us to frame a set of expectations for the path ahead, and influence our enthusiasm about pursuing a passion, accepting a challenge, renting a game— they give the ‘sneak peek’ of the rewards to come for the rigors ahead in the weekend of gaming or years of sacrifice. By allowing us to visualize the exciting times and imagine the compensation for our labors, we’re able to estimate the initial deposit of dedication and energy required to get us past the laborious portions of the quest. Any experienced “journeyman” of a field is decent at gaining a ballpark idea of expected, foreseen work on a project—savvy enough to realize that of course there are going to be random battles to deal with, dungeons to crawl through, and loads of off-duty hours spent fine-tuning our craft and grinding for hard-earned EXP. Our early motivation levels allow us to push through these foreseen moments of struggles—to a point. Eventually, what does blindside the artisan is the psychological extent of how repeated, extended labor can take a toll, when the cost of doing business far surpasses our assumed initial buy-in from our box-art assessment. The random battles become headaches and as you start angrily counting how few steps you’re taking in between them; the obnoxious duration of dungeons becomes exhausting as you audibly groan “ANOTHER screen?!”; and it only takes a few hours of off-the-clock, unpaid effort (ie, no plot progression nor change of scenery) before level grinding quickly reveals itself as the most tedious and monotonous chore RPGs have to offer. You knew there’d be work…but you didn’t expect suffering of this variety—the suffering induced when a journey deteriorates into chores. “Suffering” has an off-putting connotation, but we’re not talking scarring wounds here; suffering is also defined as “to undergo, experience, endure.” Suffering on a journey is about persevering and supplying effort when you feel completely exhausted of both energy and patience; the type of painful, required effort whose magnitude was impossible to fully grasp when you initially scanned the box art. The chore moments of your journey are pure, unadulterated suffering; as upsetting and excruciating as the manifestation of fetch quests in video games.

How do we know what constitutes a fetch quest, and what tasks represent actual, legit progress toward our end goal? Perspective. Here’s an Elixir of Reality: Every single adventure videogame ever is a fetch quest. Whether you’re seeking the black materia of destruction before your rival can get his hands on it, searching for the four dragons in order to become the dragonmaster and save the love of your life, or chasing after the last spiritual stone needed to unlock the ancient temple—the stone held by the runaway princess who was consumed by a gigantic poisoned fish that you have to find a way into and then defeat its internal possessing bio-electric anemone…I’m exhausted just thinking about it—it all follows a similar sequence of task-completion chain of events. You’re jumping through hoops, navigating from point to point, and fetching crucial items that will trigger the next scene. The difference, however, rests in our perspective of framing the hoops we’re jumping through. When we first embark on a quest, we’ve got all the enthusiasm in the world, ready to tackle any obstacle in our path. We allow ourselves to get “in the zone” with effort—we become so laser-focused on the mission at hand, 100% invested and bought-in to the challenge, that we lose track of time, our surroundings, and temporarily even the reasoning behind what we’re doing. While losing sight of a task’s purpose sounds negative on surface level, this can be the sweet spot in terms of work-completion rate. When we’re so hyperfocused that there’s no time to ponder the “bigger picture” behind why exactly we’re doing something—we’re producing and executing at max efficiency. There’s no brain space spent doubting effectiveness, questioning practicality, or contemplating different decisions—we’re too task-saturated doing.  And in this blissful state of ‘losing ourselves’ in work, we don’t see anything as fetch quests or monotonous chores to be knocked out; we see them as engaging adventures, projects to be completed, goals to be fulfilled. Our enthusiasm and investment create appreciation for the duties bestowed upon us—The black materia isn’t a book of recipes, the love of our life isn’t some random lost villager, and the spiritual stone isn’t merely some artifact to fetch for somebody else— we’re driven by the importance of these objectives, and find satisfaction by accomplishing them. It doesn’t matter how asinine or convoluted the string of tasks may appear when looked at in isolation, out of the context of our bias—we don’t care, because when we’re in the zone, our effort is full steam ahead, and we don’t have the time nor brain capacity to question the purpose of every individual step of a journey.

For the tasks and projects of our lives, this zoning principle remains true. When first setting out to accomplish any kind of pursuit we yearn for, we’re invigorated by the thought of working through the fresh challenges ahead—they’re new and exciting, and we’re armed with that killer inspiration of the box art to fuel us. The body transformation client pictures the intense workouts, the satisfying feeling of exhaustion afterward, and the badge-of-honor soreness carried as they stiffly waddle around after a fantastically brutal leg day. The aspiring athlete imagines grueling practices to perfect their skills, conditioning their bodies for war, and preparing for the pressure of center stage when it comes to those glorious game days. The writer, bursting with pent-up thoughts, visualizes the fulfilling experience of conveying those ideas onto print, sharing insight that they believe can benefit somebody in the world. We see these processes and become eager to put the effort into the exertions ahead! And let’s give ourselves some credit— we’re not signing up for a life of just recreation, fun, and games—these pursuits take work, yet it’s work that we’re motivated to do while many others couldn’t be less enthused. Plenty of people out there have no desire to kick their own butts at the gym, spend their free time doing footwork drills and sprints, or sit in front of a laptop transposing brain to keys for hours. To us, though, this life box art looks beautiful. In this ability to zone, to find genuine excitement and lose ourselves in a process, we develop a true passion in life; And in the early stages of working our butts off for this passion, we believe that nothing can stop us from reaching the top of the mountain we’re ascending.

SUFFERING IN SOBRIETY

            To this point in the quest, we have been suffering—but it’s been transparent to us; We’ve been physically suffering. Putting in the time and effort is a form of the ‘experiencing’ portion of the definition; Just because one enjoys the post-exhaustion of a deadlift, practice, or free-writing session doesn’t mean there wasn’t enduring involved. The pain of endurance becomes far more evident, however, when mental suffering comes into play—when we become sober to the monotonies of the process, slip out of that zone, and go from hyperfocused to hyperaware. In a general sense, it’s not a bad thing to take a step back and view the bigger picture from afar— but the danger lies when a bit of complacency and impatience sneak into the journey. When you think you’ve grasped the blueprint of the entire mountain, and start to question why you’re taking the current slow, serpentine, proven path, instead of just storming straight to the top. And now, in this sobering condition, you start to truly feel the suffering as your body loses the intoxicated, adrenaline-fueled state of the zone—all that excitement and enthusiasm you felt early on, dissipating away…

            Very rarely in games do you come across “fetch quests” early on. As already expressed, we enter new adventures and start new challenges with natural, excitement-driven aspiration. When our home planet is screwed, facing the looming apocalypse from an evil hedgehog of doom, nothing on the path to victory seems too daunting to us. We’re not deterred by the thought of how powerful the hedgehog’s evil magic is, or by how far we’re going to have to travel—even through time— to stop him; we’re all-in on accomplishing the mission. I’m by no means a science guy, but let me take a shwag at giving a hypothetical with my C- level of understanding: We begin a quest with a whole metric heap-ton of potential energy (built from ‘box art’ enticement and general excitement) to provide toward the trek. For any portion of the journey that we undergo, we’re putting in effort—kinetic energy, physical suffering— using that potential energy at an efficient rate, maxing out as we hit ‘the zone.’ Time flies by at a rapid rate as massive amounts of work gets done; It’s as if we’re equipped with endless stores of effort while the adventure remains fresh and untarnished. In one of my “great accomplishments” as a youngster, on a random Friday evening, I embarked on the quest to defeat this aforementioned hedgehog of doom. With the plot the game presented, I hit the zone instantly—before I knew it, it was midnight, I’d already traveled to the year 65,000,000 BC, my party consisted of a frog knight from 600 AD, a robot from the year 2300 AD, and we were about to invade a reptilian king’s lair to save some prehistoric town villager who went missing (a quest structure that sounds all too familiar…). Motivation level? Couldn’t be higher. I was suffering physically, absolutely, but I was far too engaged and invested to care or even feel it. Nothing was stopping me from keeping this rapid progress toward saving the world. But eventually—inevitably—feelings start to change as steps start to wear…the journey gets stale, and your legs start to feel heavy. Those initial subquests, once so endearing, moments where we were happy to help random villagers on our quest…they become a bore of a chore. We get flat-out understimulated—Tired of the grind. Our initial investment is there, but we’re contributing less and less each play cycle—and that effort level, once so evident and strong, fueled by our early motivation? Very quickly tumbling. After the blur of zoning that weekend, as the adrenaline started wearing off, I became aware that I was being tasked to find beef jerky for some flailing group of knights in 600 AD, because it was the only way to rejuvenate them; and then traveling to some random ice mountain in 2300 AD to present a clone of my main character—which I had to obtain at some random funhouse in 1000 AD— in order to go back in time to 12000 BC to save him…ugh…even as the reader, you’re surely feeling the annoyance, thinking the same thing I was: Just get this over with already… As we begin to sober to the repetitiousness of the tasks at hand, and see them from a different light, the suffering shifts: A mindless, easy-to-withstand physical suffering is now a mental suffering—by far a crueler battle with harsher elements—and the success of our journey teeters on whether or not we choose to keep our heart in the fight.

            Shifting back to life– we go through this same cycle of aspirational motivation when beginning a new career, journey, or challenge. The weight loss client is history’s most ambitious goal setter when they embark, prepared to practically starve themselves in the pursuit of fitness. Weights plus cardio sessions seven days a week, a daily 750 calorie deficit, and a diet that consists of nothing but chicken and veggies…really? It doesn’t take long for the true suffering to appear within that reckless roadmap. An overly aggressive, zero-contingency, smooth-sea-expectant game plan is a tell-tale sign of the rookie with zero cognizance of the mental suffering ahead—and while the naïve optimism is cute, it’s these journeymen who get blindsided by the most brutal of sucker punches. Sure, pushing through that diet and routine for a few days is nothing, as you’re running off the fumes of excitement—but the less experience you have “managing your energy,” the quicker the transformation to mental suffering; the sooner you begin to run dry on effort, leaving you unprepared—and unenthusiastic—to handle the fetch quest struggles ahead. Meal prepping is the first chore domino to fall—what a bore, dedicating a block of time to cooking copious amounts of meats and starches. Shortly thereafter (and often as a result), dietary adherence drops—you quickly tire of consuming the same, predictable, redundant measured-out foods meal after meal. And most shocking to your passionate “love for the pump,” even the physical suffering loses its invulnerability—two-a-days turn into the most agonizing of grind sessions for even the most motivated of gym rats. Rolling with the same concept, we see plenty of professional athletes flame out all-too-quickly when they sober up to the reality of just how much game plan studying, practice, and drills they have to endure week after week, season after season, unable to survive on pure talent alone—this reality tanks effort levels for those who can’t take the suffering. And on a personal note, as an eager writer, I understand that editing is important—but damn, I never would’ve imagined a fraction of the extent of writing, deleting, rewriting, rephrasing, etc involved in the process. To say I dislike editing is an understatement—I mean, come on, the box art gave me the impression that I’d be simply correcting spelling and grammatical errors. But the gods of journalism had one hell of a fetch saga waiting for me when I thought I knew what constituted ‘cleaning up’ a piece of literature. Point being, you always want to prepare for the worst—but you rarely fully anticipate the mental suffering ahead. As you get settled in to a trek, and the fresh journey scent wears off, the sweat of the physical suffering begins to build an odor; As you become a bit too familiar with the process, you learn how bad that sweat can stink. Adrenaline wears off, fatigue sets in—the true suffering has arrived. And now, with drained, tired, weary legs…will you accept and bear the pain, continuing the hike up the mountain? Or will you take the coward’s path, seeking a drug to sedate yourself from the source of this anguish?

NUMBING THE SUFFERING

The suffering is real. You’re tired. The freshness of the journey has worn off. The game’s getting old and a tad boring. You’ve exhausted that energy source quicker than you’d anticipated, pushing through all that physical suffering without even realizing how much work and time had truly been expended. And now, as you face a task no more asinine than the Galbadian train heist on disc 1, or hunting down Master NORG in the Garden basement chambers during disc 2….you are just over it when it comes to navigating the maze of repetitively-rendered backgrounds of Esthar in disc 3. The suffering is a mental battle of persistence, and the all-to-common reaction is one of complaining, resenting, quitting. The true battle of suffering has commenced, and instead of fighting it, many seek a way to blunt it; to instead avoid the agony. At best, this could be grumbling through the encounter half-heartedly, not demonstrating true care or attention, zoning out—expediting the forsaken process via whatever means possible. At worst, it means putting the controller down for good and prematurely concluding the quest, surrendering the sunk cost of all that personal investment. I hate to break the bad news: neither of these are true suffering. This is using the drug of negativity to reject the feeling from the process. And when you turn to narcotics of negativity, it’s a damn tough addiction to break, and you’re left in this new knock-off version of a zone—a daze of pessimism. Already low on energy, you piss away the rest of it on the most inefficient use: complaining, griping, whining, etc. Unlike a true relapse, though, you don’t wake up wearing guilt and shame over what you’d done—this one’s much more insidious, as it feeds your task-abandonment rationale and angers you further over all the time you “wasted” on the journey, leaving you looking back on what you did already accomplish with apathy, annoyance, and resentment.

            You will eventually encounter this mental warfare on every long jaunt. And so many of us are spring-loaded to shun it, growing hate toward the suffering—and in effect, our passion—self-destructing the entire journey, because of our inability to accept enduring the adversity of discipline through monotony. It’s a shame, and ironic, that the reasons we initially become excited for a journey—the activities inspiring chasing of aspirations, insistence on growth and progression through work—become the very same reasons we quit, once framed from a negativity mindset of ‘being over it.’ Understimulation, unwillingness to put in the effort, lack of enthusiasm; they don’t come from a lack of challenge, but rather a lack of novelty. When you become enveloped in a process, you love it, trust in it, respect it—that is, until you let those feelings of admiration turn into those of tolerance, which then become bitterness, and eventually result in resentment. Love becomes hate, trust becomes skepticism, and respect becomes contempt. The thought of eating the same bland macro-friendly meal once more sickens you; the idea of editing and reworking that article again makes you want to abandon the entire piece; and the notion of helping another NPC’s random problem in this virtual world makes you want to just quit the game and let it collect dust forever. The amount of diets, careers, and books/articles/etc that have been deserted because of the abandonment of effort in times of suffering is disheartening. That source of potential energy—a finite quantity—begins to wear thin, and the sobering happens, complete with internal monologues of “What am I doing this for?” “Is this even worth it?” “Screw this…” Tragically, that remaining energy available is sucked away and wasted on bemoaning our passion, rather than continuing to fight while so many others are too busy getting high off their refusal to suffer…

            So, what’s the alternative? How are we supposed to press on when we’re left with so little in the tank, we’ve slipped out of the zone, and opiate of complaining our quests into oblivion is offered our way, tantalizingly drawing us in…?

RESILIENCY, THE HIDDEN RESERVE OF ENERGY

            Refuse the hit of negativity. Resist the temptation to complain. Choose a willingness to accept your suffering—overcome the mental resistance—and fight beyond your understimulation. Choose to parallel that same initial level of enthusiasm and effort into the once-engaging tasks that now seem dull—yet are ripe for the sharpening.

In “The War of Art”, Steven Pressfield refers to “The Resistance” as anything and everything that gives you a distraction from putting the work in (in his case, writing); and that the only way to defeat The Resistance is to sit down and do the work, which then summons your Muse, who assists you in battle for as long as you keep writing—a self-sustaining machine. It’s the inertia—starting the writing momentum—that requires the largest amount of effort and mental fortitude.

This concept rings true in videogames as it does in passions. Mental suffering is about feeling that ‘Resistance’ toward continuing the journey, but choosing to fight it—playing through fatigue, exhaustion, tedium; Doing the work regardless of whether or not you intuitively ‘feel like it’. In this valiant fight, you find the beautiful surprise about effort—it, like the Pressfield’s described Muse, is a self-sustaining machine. Effort inspires more effort. That waning supply of potential energy, through physical suffering? It is replenished by mental suffering—which is to say, by accepting the suffering as part of the quest, we are able to harness it as energy to be used toward fighting on. To bear the adversity of the journey that wasn’t displayed on the box art is to enrich the journey—and ourselves—with a character stat boost: Resiliency. “Resilient” is defined as “spirited, pliable, tough, durable.” In other words, the exact qualities you’d want to call upon in order to survive the episodes of pain that you never anticipated. By persevering through these moments that feel like fetch quests, chores, unwanted tasks—and by supplying them with the same effort you showed when things were new, fresh, and naturally motivating—you build your stores of resiliency, fostering reserves of energy for when you need them most. This is worth emphasizing: Going through the process when you feel the physical suffering is building solid habits and skills—but continuing on, when the mental struggles arrive, is when you shift into building resilience. That’s why it’s critical to acknowledge and embrace these moments of the dog days in a journey; to understand that when you encounter these unexciting moments, where it feels like progress has come to a standstill—this is when you’re truly gaining “experience points” toward resiliency, and evolving a vital skill in conquering the even tougher mental struggles ahead. When you’ve experienced enough to actually anticipate the mental struggles ahead—-when you come close to ‘maxing out your resiliency level’? You achieve the ability to recapture ‘the zone’ even in the tasks that once became rapidly tedious and underwhelming to you. This is the promised land, the holy grail, the euphoric nirvana of attaining your productive and efficient best on a journey.

It is through this elite level of resiliency that the obsessed can continue to perform and work when the 99% call it quits. This is how the most dedicated of fitness enthusiasts can continue a bland, boring diet and fight cravings for months and months without burning out; how Tom Brady can continue to spend his offseasons and Saturdays in the film room even after two decades of the same routine; how top writers can continually find the motivation to begin new projects when they know that hundreds of hours are going to be spent on words and pages that will never see print. And, of course, you have the completionists—the 100% achievers of the gaming world. These are gamers who are insistent on acquiring every item, conquering every sidequest, and maxing out all their characters/stats to level 99s across the board—for zero in-game rewards. No real-world recognition nor notoriety, no secret unlockables, maybe just a bonus screen saying “You are a super player!” Life-changing, right?? The completionists don’t care—they’re willing to put in 4-5 times the average duration it takes to beat a game, all to receive the personal satisfaction of knowing they did everything they could to scale every byte of digital mountain the game had to offer. Extremely nerdy? Yes. Waste of time? Maybe. But is it really that much different, in inspirational concept, than a 43-year-old quarterback—who, by the way, swears by ‘pliability’ —who’s already “beaten the game” seven times, playing yet again on a new difficulty/team, and spends his free time reading FAQs and walkthroughs for how to develop furtherly complex strategies and unlock even more in his career? Look, while I’m not condoning you go out there and ‘100% a game’ to learn a life lesson—I most certainly can’t stomach that thought myself—the point stands clear: If people can put this much effort in doing the most agonizing of chore work in videogames, all for personal fulfillment of having it done, then imagine what type of incredible feats can be accomplished in the real world with this same level of investment, effort, and resilience….

TO SUFFER IS TO SURPASS

            Resilience is that essential asset that brings you the will and grit to keep pushing in the darkest and coldest of nights, despite not even the slightest glimmer of light or warmth indicating an escape from the abyss. Without resilience, we become prone to quit at the first sign of unknown or unwanted challenges in our path. Resilience is that reserve energy, the resurrecting fairy-in-a-bottle that supplies you additional strength when you seemingly have nothing left to give. When you one day reflect on your journey, you will see that it was your resilience that kept you on the path when your motivation was weakened, vulnerable, and fading away…

The dieters, writers, completionists, etc of the world don’t intuitively love every piece of work on their table— nobody does. But they push through each task—invigorating, arduous, or monotonous—with the same amount of effort and care regardless. When you dedicate your energy to doing vice complaining/excuse making, you find reserves of effort you never knew existed, thanks to that resilience. You find that next level of efficiency as you fight to get back in the zone with the task at hand, becoming engrossed in meal prepping, editing and rewriting, or spending 10+ hours leveling up a single character. In a bizarre way, you learn to blur the lines between endeavors you like and chores you dislike, as they all become cohesive components to the ultimate end goal. You gather too much rolling, energetic momentum to give up when times get tough, and your own investment becomes the foundation of inspiration for climbing further up the mountain while others gave up miles ago. Your boosted powers of resilience give you the warmth and burning desire needed most when the top of that summit freezes out the motivation of those who call it quits when the elements become cruelly frigid. You’re going to suffer—it’s inevitable—but you have the option to bear the suffering and charge on, learning to cope; or to turn around and avoid the pain, instead looking for a shortcut that will never exist, ultimately finding the exit that surely will.

A Hall of Fame, GOAT career; 100%-ing some arbitrary RPG requiring 200+ hours— two very different types of accomplishments on the ‘coolness scale’, but each stemming from the same determination of showing resilience toward the non-sexy, understimulating, incredibly dull fetch quests in their path. The greatest successes are found by those who take the unforeseen monotonies that become showstoppers to so many, and treat them as unforeseen opportunities— opportunities to differentiate yourself from the pack. Every “dull chore” is an opportunity to sharpen a lackluster skill. You can’t control the adversity that comes your way, but you can 100% control your perspective in handling the grinds of life. Your perspective will determine whether you let these fetch quests degrade your investment into wasted energy, or enrich your journey and reinforce your resilience going forth. Excitement through motivation will get you started up the mountain, investment through effort will keep you going, and resilience through suffering will prevent you from stopping. When life’s adventures start to feel like life’s chores, choose not to follow the pack by engaging in complaining toward stagnation; but rather accept the mental suffering as a tool to strengthen your resiliency, and attack the 10,000^th hour with the same tenacity and spirit as you did the first. “Where’d you say you last saw that recipe book, mayor? Fantastic, you can count on me—I’ll go fetch that right now.”

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