Hurt Fast or Hurt Slow - Ep. 25

Special operations selection teaches you to rethink your relationship with pain. The discomfort of doing something with a painful but partial effort isn't meaningfully different from the pain of giving it everything you have. One is just slower, and when it's over you wouldn't really remember the difference.

For the world of SOF selection to become your home, and to eventually succeed in it, you have to think of pain not as something to be avoided as often as possible, but as a component of a strategy. There is productive pain that helps you get something done, and there is useless pain.

You can hurt fast, or you can hurt slow. When it's over it's all just a blur of suffering and the subtle distinctions won't have mattered. What will matter is what you accomplished with that pain.