, , ,

How Micro-Suffering Leads to Macro-Rewards

Micro-Suffering, Macro-Rewards

In August 2000, a skinny twenty-one-year-old American rock climber was kidnapped and almost murdered in a foreign country. With a brutal but life-saving strategy, he and three fellow climbers made it out alive, but not without deep emotional scars. Turning to climbing, he learned to lean into his pain instead of run from it. 

Over the next year, he strengthened his ability to focus on small, redundant maneuvers: the nuance of body position, the placement of toes along a razor-thin ridge of rock, fingers grasping a paper-thin edge of stone that sliced mercilessly at his skin. Over and over, he swung, flagged, edged and crawled up rock like a human fly.

Then, in 2001—almost a year after escaping the horrors of Uzbekistan—he accidentally severed most of his left index finger while using a table saw.

Despite being told he’d never climb again, this young climber refused to accept defeat. Despite all odds, he went on to be named one of National Geographic’s Adventurers of the Year, received the prestigious Piolet d’Or for alpinism, and was awarded the American Alpine Club’s highest honor. He has written articles for the Alpinist, Climbing and Rock and Ice magazines. He is widely considered the best all-around rock climber in the world, making the first free-ascents of several El Capitan routes in Yosemite National Park. 

His name is Tommy Caldwell.

Doubt Your Doubt and Fuel Your Belief

Overcoming extreme adversity, Tommy Caldwell has learned a thing or two about doubt.

And he doesn’t encourage it. 

In his memoir, The Push: A Climber’s Search for the Path, Caldwell says this about doubt:

“I notice my mind an instant before my body. If doubt creeps in, even the tiniest bit, I hesitate. Just for a moment. Then my feet start to slip, my core starts to sag. I pull too hard with my hands, eroding precious layers of skin while trying to maintain my body position. To an observer, it happens in minute, imperceptible ways—until that micro shift pulls me from the wall and I soar through the air, racing toward the ground, sometimes falling as far as sixty feet but along a wall so steep that I hit nothing. The rope stretches, absorbing the impact and safely, softly, arresting my fall.”

Doubt—even a micro amount of doubt—can cause a sixty-foot fall. 

On the flip-side, Tommy Caldwell also talks about the small moments of suffering that yield great rewards. As he sits in a portaledge tacked to the Dawn Wall, his legs dangling over the edge, Caldwell confesses, “I think back seven years to the beginning of this journey-turned-obsession. To the countless days I’ve spent hauling heavy bags of gear and water up the wall, how I stuff my feet into shoes so tight that I sometime lose toenails, and how I grab the same razor-sharp flakes over and over and over until my fingertips bleed and my muscles tremble.”

But as Tommy knows all too well, small sufferings add up to prestigious awards. 

Which prompts me to wonder, “If Tommy Caldwell is willing to endure small but crucial sufferings that lead to first ascents of El Capitan, what micro-actions am I choosing that have macro-impacts in my life?” 

Micro-Suffering: One Decision that Makes All the Difference

Science has proven that enduring a small amount of pain in the moment will result in a larger reward in the future.

These are what I like to call Crucial Micro Sufferings.

These happen at key points throughout your day–and if you make the right decision in that moment, the law of Risk/Reward will naturally bring a great measure of success to you throughout the day.

For example: the Art of Rising Early.  

Let’s say you set your alarm for 5:55 a.m. The alarm goes off the next morning, and you wake up. 

For a full minute, you lay in bed, struggling. 

“Do I stay in bed? Do I get up and start the day early?” 

As you lay there, struggling with this decision, you suddenly realize something:

The small micro-suffering of the now will result in macro-rewards throughout the day.

That 1 minute of suffering—your feet hitting the cold floor, you pushing against the grogginess of sleep, you walking to the bathroom in the dark—will put you in a position to succeed for the other 1439 minutes of your 24-hour day. 

The same principle applies to weight loss.

Let’s imagine you’ve set a goal to lose 20 pounds in 20 weeks. By next Spring Break, you want a Spring Break body. But to achieve that goal, you need to put in the work. Part of that process means going to the gym 3-5 times a week. 

You know you need to get out of your nice warm bed and go to the gym. 

But note: this is where the suffering begins.

The suffering starts in the process of choice.

It is easy to erroneously believe that micro-suffering leads to micro-rewards. 

While there are micro-rewards to our good choices, we need to consider the law of compound effect.

1 minute of suffering = a great workout that gets you pumped for the next 23 hours and 144 minutes of your day.

Small price = big reward. 

Think about it. Not only do you get in a great workout, for the rest of the day you will be more careful with what you eat. You will have more energy. You will walk out of the gym and feel like you’re on top of the world. 

A Penny of Suffering for a Dollar of Satisfaction

It takes less than one minute to choose the turkey salad over the pizza and nachos for lunch. You might suffer in that minute—hey, everyone else is enjoying those cheesy jalepeno nachos, why can’t I?—but you choose the salad and find yourself alert, attentive, and energetic the rest of the afternoon. 

It takes ten seconds to choose between the soda or the water—you choose water and find yourself hydrated enough to power through the 3 o’clock afternoon slump without a major sugar crash.

This principle can be applied through-out the day.

Micro-Suffering: breathing slowly for a minute while your toddler throws a temper tantrum.

Macro-Reward: calmly feeding your child and then putting them to bed without hours of guilt and shame because you shouted back at your 3-year old. 

Micro-Suffering: Denying an impulse purchase at the store

Macro-Reward: The money in your bank account stays in your bank account, and you feel a little stronger the rest of the afternoon. 

Micro-Suffering: keeping your composure instead of honking at the slow driver in front of you

Macro-Reward: immense relief when you realize the driver is your next-door neighbor.

The Universe Puts a Big Price Tag on Enduring Small Sufferings

Suffering is part of the human condition. 

While human nature predisposes us to seek pleasure and avoid pain, there are crucial moments when it is to our advantage to do the opposite: choose a small moment of suffering so that you may enjoy hours of reward. 

The Tibetan monk Khenchen Konchog Gyaltsen Rinpoche teaches that there are actually benefits from suffering: these include wisdom, compassion, resilience and a deeper respect for reality.

All micro-suffering leads to greater resilience. 

And when we suffer, it forces us out of a mindless state, causing us to reflect on our experience. 

A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down

How and when you choose to suffer will have a big impact on your life. 

Retired Navy Seal and ultramarathoner David Goggins gives this advice: “Schedule suffering into your day…if you do, you’ll find that at the other end of that suffering is a whole other life just waiting for you.” 

What are crucial Micro-Suffering moments for you that, when endured, bring you Macro Rewards? 

Please let me know in the Comments Section below.

–B.C. Christiansen

One response to “How Micro-Suffering Leads to Macro-Rewards”

  1. Matt Christiansen Avatar
    Matt Christiansen

    We’ll thought out and written post! It’s so true- as humans we tend to avoid suffering, but in doing so we cut ourselves off from some of our greatest potential triumphs. Keep writing!