Avoiding the Problem = More Pain
I’ve never been a fan of taking painkillers unless I’m recovering from a medical procedure. For everyday life, I try not to take them, even when I’m in a lot of pain. I’m not some psycho who likes pain; my attitude is that I want a solution, not a temporary band-aid.
I’ve experienced a lot of chronic back pain for over 15 years, and if I relied on pain killers the whole time, I’m sure my liver would be in much worse shape than my back.
Self-medicating to mask a problem is very common. I’ve certainly done that with alcohol more times than I can count.
But for the chronic problems in our lives, we really need to find and address the root problem.
I injured my back when I was in my early twenties, but it got worse over the years because I didn’t invest my attention into rehabbing it, in part because I just assumed it would heal on its own.
But most problems don’t get solved when we ignore them, and my back was no exception.
This was a hard and humbling lesson that took me well over a decade to learn. For as open-minded as I think I am, it’s clear that I’m also pretty stubborn about some things.
I preach to my kids all the time, to not put off hard things until later, because later is never better. But they haven’t experienced enough pain from putting things off to fully comprehend and embrace this lesson yet. And I get it, I still make this mistake sometimes.
I think the reason I stubbornly put off some chronic problems is I anticipate greater pain if I address it right now.
Like when I’ve failed to let go an employee who was clearly not working out because I imagined more pain from that process than the pain I was experiencing keeping them on the job.
Eventually, I addressed the problem, but only after my current pain became all-consuming and outweighed all my “anticipated pain,” I was wanting to avoid.
Thank goodness I eventually did what I needed to do, but going forward I don’t want to waste weeks, months, and even years of my life not addressing problems anymore. I’m over it.
Life is short. Get after it.