The Two Habits of All Losers
I was going through my morning routine and, as what usually happens after prolonged physical activity, my gears started turning and thoughts started to come together.
This particular morning, I was ruminating on the differences between people who are successful and people who are failures. Now, when I say “successful” vs “failures” I do not simply mean in regards to money — I have to clarify because that is a common metric of success in our capitalistic society. How success can be defined is mutable, transient, and multifaceted and to simply focus on an economic outcome runs the risk of excluding the other areas of life that a man can find satisfaction and fulfillment in.
In my discussion with my harshest critic (myself) I asked “what habits do all successful people have in common that failures do not?” I ran down a list and my interlocutor quickly offered rebuttals. After going back and forth, I settled on two intertwined — but distinct — habits that successful people have that failures do not: The ability to forego pleasure and the ability to seek pain. To make it digestible, I will speak about them from their opposites, the traits that failures have — seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
Seeking pleasure is a natural thing for humans to do. When taken by itself it has no morality, it has no social value, it is simply an innate characteristic that all sentient life has. We do things that make us happy. We do things that entertain us. We seek joy, pleasure, and fulfillment. Properly harnessed and with an accurate awareness of the cost of these things, this urge can be used to accomplish great things and as a motivator to achieve success.
The problem with our society is that the pleasure seekers have forgotten that pleasure has a cost. The pursuit of pleasure still has a cost attached, but that cost has been made so opaque that we cannot see it or, worse, that we are capable of seeing it but choose to use the opacity as an excuse to not acknowledge it. Our pursuit of pleasure comes in many forms, from outright hedonism to a simple desire to replace boredom.
The people who haven’t forgotten are the people who are all to eager to take a profit off your pursuit of pleasure. They will sell you that streaming service, just give them a bit of money and a bit of meta data. They will sell you that value meal, just give them exponentially more cash than it costs to produce and damn the health consequences. They will sell you those Balenciagas, just fork over that paper and enjoy that dopamine hit from the status. If you don’t like your body and it is making you feel bad, hand over some cash and they will get you a diet that absolutely works (with no effort involved, because that would make you feel bad.) Lonely? Upgrade that Tinder/Bumble/Hinge/MeetMe/PoF/OKcupid/Christian Mingle/BLK/Grindr or whatever hellish dating app promises you your happily ever after (or just happy until sunrise). Can’t find a way to make money without hard work and its getting you down? Sign up for Pyramid Scheme University and learn how to scam like the best of them and get that Lambo. Need attention? Instagram and facebook and snapchat and TikTok are at your fingertips…don’t mind the fact that they know everything about you. Anything just to be happy.
Constantly pursuing pleasure makes you a slave to it and to those who provide it. There will always be someone happy to take your money and time to give you a bit of pleasure in return.
As the urban poet El-P so eloquently said “Wanna live for the thrill? They’ll arrange it.”
Nobody likes pain. I know that if I had to choose “punch in the face or finger-blasting sorority girls”…well, I would not choose the punch in the face. No sentient creature likes pain or discomfort. We actively seek to avoid those things. Hell, that is why we invented awesome shit like houses, and air conditioning, shoes, and those airplane neck pillows. Pain is just the fucking worst and, given an option, most of us avoid it for good reason.
You know why we have an obesity epidemic? Because diet and exercise is pain. It is the pain of deprivation and the pain of unnecessary effort. Most of the problems that people have stem from a lack of ability to accept that pain is a part of life and a desire to escape pain. Even relationships can be pain — emotional vulnerability and the potential to be harmed deeply cause many people to avoid attachments and pursue hookup culture.
Our incessant desire to avoid pain makes us vulnerable to the people who can promise us a life without pain, struggle, or sacrifice. You want to know what gives us power?
Seeking pain.
The person who can look at the choice and say “I choose the thing that I do not want, the thing that will hurt, the thing that takes effort” is the person who becomes free from the undue influence of those who would use their personal weaknesses to enslave them. Choosing the pain of discipline and exercise frees us of obesity. Choosing the pain of frugality frees us from debt. Choosing the pain of denying lust frees us from its throes. To choose pain is to choose to pay the cost of freedom.
If we can learn to forego our pleasure and embrace the things that we know are necessary, even if painful, we can live much richer lives.
