The Process of Increasing Pain Tolerance to Condition Yourself for Growth
A few days ago I wrote about the mindset you need to increase your pain tolerance. Today I want to go into the process of increasing your pain tolerance. Once your mindset is oriented to understand the difference between positive pain vs. negative pain, and your mindset accepts that you must experience positive pain to condition yourself for growth, next you need a process to follow.
What’s more, that process must push you beyond your pain threshold each time you experience it. This requires a serious amount of commitment. Obviously, no one expects you to enjoy pain. However, if you can’t find a reason to put yourself through pain you won’t commit to the process. So, the first step in the process is to find your “why”.
Your “why” is not just a goal, it must be something bigger. If you can rationalize that you can still achieve your goal without increasing your pain threshold, then you will quit. Each time you experience the pain of pushing yourself beyond your current limitations, you will find a reason to quit.
Therefore, your “why” must be essential to your way of life or the way of life of a loved one for it to be bigger than any reason you can come up with for quitting. Once you are confident with your why the process gets easier to execute, even though the pain does not get easier.
It’s at this point in which you develop a routine to test your absolute maximum limit on a consistent basis. This test must be as realistic as possible, if not officially a “live” experience. Additionally, you or a coach must meticulously track the specific measurements of the pain tolerance you’re trying to increase.
In between each test you train to push your limitations a tiny bit further each time. This requires deliberate practice targeting the specific measurement you are trying to increase.
Finally, be sure to plan both recovery time and extra sleep. Don’t. Skip. This. Step. Recovery and sleep are critical to the process. Your brain needs time and energy to rebuild your pain threshold. In addition, it’s during this time you must continually reaffirm your commitment to your “why”.