No Pain, No Gain. Life Lesson on Endurance

I learned one of the most important life lessons from my gym instructor a few years ago. I had then joined the gym with an objective of shedding a few kilos.

We would start our routine with some basic warm-up exercises and as the time passed, the rigor of our work-outs became more extensive. When I went through some of the new exercises for the first time, my muscles almost screamed in pain. One day, in a very casual moment, I asked the instructor, “Isn’t this too much to loose only a few kilos?”

“You get almost nothing without going through some kind of pain, unless you win a lottery.”, replied the man who was himself a fitness freak. He was a marketing executive with a large pharmaceutical company when he decided to pursue his calling and start a fitness center. He neither had space nor money to start out. He went through a painful process of starting up, getting space on lease and getting some funding from the bank to get some basic equipments. At may points in this journey, he felt like giving up on his dream and going back to his job. But then, his belief in his pursuit was stronger than the pain he was enduring. What started as a two member team was now a successful fitness center running round the clock with a number of trained instructors and some very good facilities.

I learned that:

• Road to achievement is more like a marathon race and less like a sprint.
• We have more strength and capacity to endure, than we think.
• When we strongly believe in our purpose, the roadblocks don’t deter us.
• No pain, no gain. (It is very aptly said so.)
• All great leaders have undergone the pain to achieve their purpose (e.g. Gandhi)

I pushed through those rigorous work-outs. Every time when my muscles screamed, every time when I thought of giving up, I remembered those golden words from the gym instructor – “You get almost nothing without going through some kind of pain”.  

Wish you a wonderful week ahead!

A few other posts on Persistence, that you might love reading:

• What I learned from my daughter about “Persistence”
• Great Quotes: Persistence
• My Guest Post at Mountain State University’s LeaderTalk Blog: On Perseverance and Pushing through.

Photo Courtesy: Eric Lon’s Photo stream