“Unless you’re dying, it’s ingrained in our culture to play. Pain doesn’t hurt, it’s just pain.” -Chris Pronger
Pain is just pain, it is not able to stop you unless you let it.
You show up and do your job even if you have to drag yourself to do so. Growing up on the farm, the animals needed to be fed each morning before we ate. That attitude of “do the work before you eat” carried me to success in athletics, academics, and as an author.
You start the game, and you finish it. You don’t leave the hay out in the field, it needs to be in the barn or else the entire growing season was wasted and the animals won’t have food, meaning ultimately we would not have food. You finish the job, whether it is bucking up the trees or writing the code or delivering the project on time.
During Covid I had a biopsy on my lip because they feared I had mouth cancer. My face was swollen and bloody and my lip huge like I had been in the ring with Mike Tyson. I couldn’t speak and I threw out the prescription painkillers because of the potential for addiction. The day after, I was supposed to attend a virtual conference with 1:1 meetings for the afternoon.
I attended the conference and even though I couldn’t speak I was able to use the chat feature for the 1:1s and made connections that are still mutually beneficial. It would have been easy to stay in bed and sleep off the effects of the surgery, but that’s not how I was raised. Even today because of a mistake they made, I still have pain in my mouth from nerve damage that gets worse the more that I use my mouth, but I get up on stage and give my all even though by the end my mouth is burning with pain. Because it’s just pain.
Play and finish the game, or else you will never win.