There’s a difference between getting hurt and getting injured.
I’ve been a broken record at home trying to ingrain this lesson into my kindergarten-aged daughter: it’s okay to do things where you might get hurt; just don’t get injured.
Basically, don’t be afraid of pain…but let’s not take a day trip to the emergency room.
Take gymnastics for example. You’re going to fall, you’re going to get sore, and you going to activate some muscles you didn’t know existed. That kind of hurt makes you stronger. But if you ignore your limits, don’t listen to coaches, or are reckless, that’s when you get injured. Injuries are the things that set you back.
Too many people avoid doing hard things because they’ve conflated pain or discomfort with injury.
Every time my daughter tells me she doesn’t want to go to school, instead of pretending that school is a magical place, I tell her:
“I know, but doing things you don’t want to do makes you tough. You get stronger every time you go to school when you don’t want to go.”
I don’t want her to grow up thinking discomfort is something to run from. Doing things you don’t want to do builds strength and confidence. It’s the foundation of a good life.
This dichotomy fascinates me:
“If you only do easy things, your life will be hard. If you do hard things, your life gets easier.”
The easy path is:
- Not taking care of your health
- Avoiding risk
- Refusing to build skills
- Ignoring your finances
- Staying in your comfort zone and not trying new things
It feels safer in the moment, but you’re setting yourself up for injury. You’re causing the thing you want to avoid.
Unfortunately, the easy path doesn’t only show up in avoidance. You can just as easily over-calibrate and double down on a handful of hard things while neglecting everything else. On this path you feel productive, tough, and even justified. This is where understanding the difference between pain and injury is important.
When you take the easy path in either direction, you inflict the deepest injury of all: becoming a victim in your own story.
A balanced life is somewhere in the middle. These are some keystone principles to keep in mind:
- Avoidance makes life hard.
- Doing painful things helps you grow.
- Overexertion breaks you.
- Injury forces you to stop.
- Discipline builds strength.
If I can teach this to my daughter, she’ll be set for life. If I can practice it and continue building better habits, maybe I’ll keep growing into the type of parent who models the lesson instead of just explaining it.