Colin O’Brady: Pain is Mandatory, Suffering is Optional

It's just a crazy thing that you've done and it begs the question. When you do crazy things, like does this change you as a person? Does like walking across Antarctica is one, rowing across the Drake stretch, as it was called, the Drake Passage is another. Like, is this changing you as a person? Like what are these, because these are experiences where you told someone, hey, you're going to sleep 90 minutes at a clip and then you're going to row for 90 minutes and you're going to poop into a bucket and you're going to sleep like a sardine with a bunch of other dudes on this boat. You're not going to sleep much. You're probably going to hallucinate. Sometimes you're going to row in the dark. Same songs. Yeah, you'll get through it though. A couple of weeks later you'll be done. Like these are weird things that you're doing that's sort of changing. Your personal life experiences are so much more extreme than the average person's. Yeah, 100%. I mean, you know, one of my reasons for doing this for sure is to test the limits of my own potential and grow. I'm not doing them just to like, so that I can be the exact same person on the other side of Antarctica, the other side of Drake Passage. It's to take that learning. You know, I've been asked a similar question I guess before, but my answer or the way that I kind of think about it is I've started to think about life like the, I mean, I've started thinking about life and the totality of life experience between like say a numerical one and 10, like one being the worst day of your life and 10 being the best day of your life. And you know, one might be, you know, a day that if a family member passes away or one might be being wet and cold and freezing in an ocean row boats, you know, spooning with this other guy and you know, been shitting a bucket and being exhausted and tired, you know, like just like rough moments in your life. And 10 is this hedonistic joy, the most pleasure filled day ever. It's just happy, joyful. Maybe you've succeeded in something you've accomplished, like all this kind of stuff. And as I've kind of looked around at the world, people say, what are you afraid of? You must not be afraid of being alone or you must not be afraid of, you know, these hard challenges or stuff like that. I'm like, maybe not. But what I'm really afraid of is actually living a life range bound between four and six. I think too often people, you know, the typical life experience, unfortunately, because we have some crease or comforts, particularly in the Western world where, you know, you can live a life just stuck between four and six. So maybe the happiest day of your year, your week, it's like the Super Bowl and your team wins a Super Bowl and you crush a couple of beers with your buddy and you high five and you're like, oh, that was awesome. Like, that was cool. But it's not 10. I mean, it's a six. And then like maybe the worst day of your week, it's like a Monday and your boss yells at you or something like that. And you're just like, you're like, oh man, like that's kind of bummer. But you know what? I don't really give a shit about my job anyways. So like, I'm not really that bummed about it. I'm just like, is I'm just kind of like in this like life of like quiet desperation in the middle. And I think a lot of that has to do with because we're hedging or we're afraid of the ones. We're just like, I don't want to experience a one. I don't want to experience discomfort. I don't want to experience pain like anything to do that. But what I've realized, I think of it like kind of a pendulum, like swinging the totality of life experience, like to get to the 10s, you also need to embrace the ones like the totality of life in the experience. I'm not experiencing these high highs or these hedonistic joys or these beautiful flow states or things like that, in spite of the ones, in spite of the challenge, but it's because of them. By pulling my sled, 53 days on my 53rd day of pulling my sled across San Artica, I get there, my hips are poking out, my ribs are sticking out. I'm exhausted. I can barely pick my duffel bag up to put it in my sled. My body is completely compromised. I'm exhausted. But then I tap into the deepest flow state of my entire life. I find this place in my mind, in my body, in my soul, and I push 32 hours without stopping to the finish line, and I wouldn't have gotten there had I not pushed myself, had I not gone through this difficulty. I like to say that pain is mandatory. These challenges are painful. Straight up. Pain is mandatory. Make no mistake about this. The obvious things I'm doing are painful. They're hard. Whatever. But the suffering part is optional. You don't have to be in these moments so when I'm like, oh my God, this is horrible. I'm in this. And why did I get myself out there? There's a terrible blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and go down this path. You're like, I'm doing this because when I step outside of my comfort zone, I grow. And as I grow, I can share that with other people and hopefully have that ripple effect of positivity and inspiration that's lasting in the world for others as well. Yeah. You mentioned one of my favorite quotes ever, the Thoreau quote, most men live lives of quiet desperation. Yeah. That's a great fucking quote. And so damn true. I think you're right. I think you really need very difficult things in your life in order to appreciate real comfort and relaxation. Absolutely. I don't think you hit it if your whole life is just soft cushions and everything's made out of allure and people are feeding you grapes. I think you live like an asshole. Yeah. I think, you know, we don't like that because no one really, suffering is hard. It's hard. It feels uncomfortable. But you don't realize that unless you suffer, you don't appreciate calm. You don't appreciate peace. I think there's just far too many people out there seeking comfort. I agree with that. And I think that it's funny because people are going towards that. They're hedging against discomfort, like, okay, well how to make this as comfortable as possible. And then they sit there and they're like, why am I unsatisfied? Why am I not happy? And it's like, because you're hedging against discomfort because you're trying to make, like you said, it's poor education. Really. People are not educated on what it takes in order to be fulfilled in life. The ideas that material possessions or some modicum of success is the goal. It's not. You know, difficult tasks is what make you do something that's hard to do. Do something that's interesting. Do something that's complicated and intricate. Do something that requires you to stretch your boundaries.