Because disagreement is useful, read the best AI-generated counterargument to this article.

First of all, I ask my readers for a little indulgence, because today I am trying my hand at a difficult and often controversial subject: personal development. I fell into the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) cauldron in 2005 with the sulfurous Anthony Robbins and his incredible bestseller Unlimited Power, which shook me up and boosted me back then. Since then, I have never stopped thinking about my personal definition of the good life, the one worth living. What is the essence of being alive? According to which objective and subjective criteria? How do our experiences shape us, and how can we extract the maximum number of lessons from them?

These questions are far too complex and subjective for me to pretend I can answer them, even partially. Allow me, nevertheless, in this small article, to offer a few ideas that seem to me uncommon, perhaps even polemical, and that may feed your own reflections.

The Seeds of Questioning

When we go through life calmly surfing the broad, low-risk directions that society generally wants and promotes, it is common to wonder: is this the best career path for me? Is this life really what I want? Since the grass often looks greener elsewhere, those who typically choose a salaried-civil-servant kind of job, a role without turbulence, challenges within reach, or more generally a life without trouble, can at times start questioning the relevance of this quietness from a personal optimization perspective.

Living fully sometimes looks like a video game. Levels that are too easy bore us quickly; levels that are too hard without preparation frustrate and exasperate us almost automatically. Both situations inevitably lead to a deep and destructive disinterest: we no longer feel like playing (mala3binch). And no longer wanting to play is the game over of childhood, that infinite energy that quickly goes out even though it used to be a source of wonder, curiosity, learning, and permanent fascination with the world around us. Conversely, a well-built game path accompanies us patiently as the difficulty rises. It frustrates us just enough to feel the accomplishment of moving forward. It gives us the small wins we are proud of without turning them into a drug. These small wins are above all the fuel that helps us navigate the shaken waters of our too-often hostile world.

A full life is a life that delicately follows this curve of progression and optimization of the self. It is a life that does not make us throw the controller away and store the console indefinitely.

Staying with the video game metaphor, there is one type of game that has made a sensation in recent years in terms of game design: the open world. It is possible to explore entire worlds made of billions of square kilometers (as in Minecraft, with an equivalent of 8 times the surface of the Earth, or in the incredible Zelda saga), playable space with all its details, particularities, and social interactions (which will soon be revolutionized by LLMs). In such a game, we feel as lost as we are excited by the immense field of possibilities, while knowing that only a fraction of the territory will ever be crossed in the time allotted to us (to play / to live). It is precisely this powerful sensation of possibility that feeds 15th-century explorers and the eternally curious of the 21st century with the same energy.

Living fully means regularly feeling filled with this energy, letting the mind wander through the profusion of possibilities and project itself into alternative realities: The world is your oyster, as Shakespeare would have said. Living 10 lives in one in reality, and living 1000 lives in one in the imagination.

In this long, foggy, and tumultuous personal quest, we face a strongly polarized and structuring system for the unfolding of our life. This polarity is called Pain and Freedom.

Pain and Freedom

Pain is your best ally.
Freedom is your vital breath.

Pain Is a Signal of Existence

Pain is an unpleasant physical and emotional sensation, a deeply subjective signal that comes to us from the depths of evolution to alert us to a difficult and potentially dangerous situation. Except in the case of a rare medical condition, or through heavy drug use, it is impossible to silence this signal in a lasting way, since it sits at the heart of our feedback circuits. Beyond this down-to-earth definition, pain is one of the most real sensations that exists. Feeling pain is one of the best ways to prove to ourselves that our presence in this world is concrete and that we interact with it. In a world where nothing makes sense anymore, pain anchors us in the present moment, pulls us out of the blissful numbness of daily routine, its small futile annoyances, and its fleeting, ephemeral pleasures. Children understand the importance of this signal very quickly and use it intelligently to escape a nightmare. This little piece of folk wisdom comes from the fact that pain wakes the mind and transcends dimensions.

Pain Is a Lesson

Pain guides decision-making with sharpness and precision. When we walk in the forest and stumble into a patch of nettles, for example, we very quickly feel the bother, then the discomfort, and finally the persistent burn inflicted by the plant. The brain is forever marked by this painful experience during the walk: the place freezes in memory and the instant becomes an almost unforgettable souvenir that we will not fail to recount to friends and family. The next outing in the forest will be done in trousers and gloves, and we will avoid taking that dangerous path. These disturbing moments, sometimes traumatic ones, are all markers that life gives us so we can retain a lesson, remember a person, a behavior, and not make the same mistake again. Without this marking, we would repeat the same mistakes without learning anything. And God knows how much we need this kind of marking in a world overloaded with events, saturated with information, and hyperstimulating us without making us progress.

Pain Is Resistance and Discomfort

Not all pains are physical and acute. In our daily lives, every day, we are assaulted by micro-pains: unpleasant situations, moments of embarrassment, social desynchronization, the desire not to do it — not to go there. No desire to go to the gym, not in the mood to go to the restaurant with friends, fear of moving house, no will to take that road, no mood to meet so-and-so’s gaze, etc. All these small discomforts are psychological resistances that prevent us from exploring, meeting, seeing, living. Our brain tries to tell us there is unknown and risk “over there”, but we interpret this anticipatory signal as a potential imminent danger, and therefore try to flee it. This resistance and this discomfort should be interpreted as the fog of war of open worlds, meaning the space where knowledge of the situation fades, the space of unknown possibilities that opens the way to the most beautiful discoveries, encounters, and learning moments.

To Live Is to Suffer

Behind this deliberately polemical formulation, what must be understood is that a rich life is necessarily made of successions of small pains, each bringing its share of wisdom and memory. Fleeing pain, all forms of pain, is a way of enjoying time less, of staying in a state of lethargy that does not make us progress. Of course, not all pains are acceptable: those that disrupt the brain and leave deep negative scars are destructive to the self; those that are too frequent exhaust the gauge of energy and breath and can lead to forms of inconsolable fatigue of the soul (depression, irritability, bad mood). Living fully means managing to find this effective, productive, and benevolent balance with all the moments of pain that come to us. Accepting them and making them allies for growing and learning. Leaving comfort zones to start cautiously dipping our feet into zones of discomfort.

Freedom and Pain

Freedom is your vital breath.
Pain is your best ally.

Freedom Is a Window of Light

In the mechanical rolling of habits — transport, food, work, family, and distractions — small moments of freedom are like a thin light that comes to illuminate the gloom of daily routine. These moments are sometimes the opportunity to go watch a football match, have coffee with old friends, grant ourselves a few moments alone (of prayer, meditation, or just silence), or simply clear a few pages of a book that has been eyeing us for a while. Giving ourselves the time to step out of routine requires mental effort, but it is necessary in order to open ourselves to new possibilities. These possibilities are the window of light that will allow new discoveries to happen. We must therefore go seek this light in order to see better through the surrounding gloom, the kind that depresses us and makes us lose our taste for life.

Freedom Is the Promise of a Better Future

When the window of freedom opens, or rather when we make the effort to open the window, it is generally an entire world that presents itself to us. A world made not only of moments of escape, but also of ideas, encounters, and opportunities. Giving ourselves freedom means exposing ourselves to the rich promise made by the complexity of the world around us: the promise of learning, growing, evolving, better understanding what surrounds us. The promise of living fully. Drinking from this promise means gaining energy and willpower. It means wanting to go seek even more light and maintain the search for this welcome inspiration. Of course, freedom does not necessarily bring good news or benevolent opportunities. It makes us a promise that may not be kept if the conditions are not there to, for example, have a meaningful encounter or close a beautiful professional opportunity. Still, having this promise in front of oneself is already a success in itself against the anesthetic danger of comfort zones.

Freedom Is the Antidote to Fear

Freedom is, by essence, the best remedy against fear of the unknown. Embracing freedom means learning to love what surrounds us (landscapes, people, ideas, experiences) and gradually discovering that this fear is irrational. Accepting freedom means taking a deep breath before making the major structuring choices of life, the risks that will turn your path, at best, into a family legend, and at worst, into an interesting adventure to tell. Opposite the breath of freedom, fear is a form of emotional immobilization of the mind. It is a way of keeping oneself inside a small cage with no ray of light, even though the field of possibilities is infinite. Freedom and fear complement each other in the sense that both can alternate depending on mental phases, and one must know how to accept oneself inside this duality that everyone experiences in one way or another across the timeline of a full life. But still, a free mindset neutralizes every form of worry linked to what lies on the other side by applying, for example, formulas like “And why not, after all?” or “At worst, what can happen?”

What Are Pain and Freedom in Our Daily Life?

Freedom in daily life is the possibility of moving around, traveling without fear or major constraint, visiting unusual places. Freedom at work is the possibility of choosing one’s career, developing one’s potential and skills. It is also the major structuring decisions (meeting someone, marriage, changing jobs, resigning) that draw the personal path we build. Taking freedom with full teeth means first recognizing that everything is possible (the light exists), and then putting ourselves in the right dispositions to benefit from opportunities (seeking the light, exposing ourselves to the light), instead of passively waiting for a ray to illuminate us. In this sense, freedom should not be seen as a static state that falls on us, but as a conscious movement of active search and risk-taking. Of course, the search for freedom happens as much as possible according to the customs and norms of our society. Freedom does not deny personal responsibility, because some decisions are sometimes heavy with consequences and may not be assumable later.

Pain in daily life, as I define it here, translates into a feeling of reluctance toward our environment. Fear precedes pain because it is an anticipation of it, whether it is the pain of doing a task never done before, taking care of a child for the first time, the embarrassment of speaking to someone we do not know, or the knot in the stomach when closing a big contract. More prosaically, pain can be, in a weight room, the act of lifting more than the usual weight or pushing for a few extra minutes on the bike. Cerebral pains occur when a mental pattern does not match reality: the brain must adapt and learn from this new information. Not all pains are equal, and lifting more than necessary will have significant physical consequences. In the same way, the psychological scars of trauma (especially childhood trauma) endure over time and bring nothing good to the development of the accomplished adult. In daily life, a good pain must be an invitation to question oneself and improve. Beyond that, pain becomes counterproductive.

Pain and Freedom Go Together

There is a fascinating symmetry between pain and freedom, a breathing cycle of the self in which pain is a contraction of the self onto its strengths and weaknesses, because the world presses on us in order to transform us, while freedom implies the inverted relationship: we project ourselves onto the world, we extend ourselves over it in order to transform it.

The pain-freedom pair is, in my view, a vital cycle, an inevitable one that we regularly experience in phases, according to personal energy and chance. Freedom succeeds pain as the natural reward of a fight against oneself and against the world. Growing harmoniously with the pain-freedom couple is also an opportunity to explore the world more efficiently and face it with more vigor without fearing failure. And exploring the world is the opportunity to confront more personal challenges, and therefore just as many opportunities to absorb the pain that makes us progress.

Everyone must be able to find their own pain-freedom rhythm and live it as peacefully as possible. At times, and depending on circumstances, imbalance occurs and makes us hold our breath, but it is always possible to exhale for a long time and recover the healthy pain-freedom rhythm in full awareness of the forces and circumstances that are pushing us around.

A Few Ideas to Materialize the Pain-Freedom Rhythm

Bon ok, but concretely, what does all this mean? Here are a few ideas to build, feel, and make conscious the pain-freedom rhythm:

• [Pain] Fight against the bubbles of comfort and lethargy that form
  I feel that I can no longer tear myself away from such or such behavior that is clearly harmful to me, or at the very least not very useful. I feel the pain of going to do something else: write, develop, cook, clean. I observe myself in this inability to find the energy to change behavior. I feel the ease in the decision I have just made. I make a small effort to read one page of a book that has been lying around for months, and I become aware of the mental resistance invading me. I have been delaying for months the coffee I owe to so-and-so. I do not feel like meeting people. I consider myself to be in a temporarily antisocial phase. I am afraid that the new contract I am being offered to sign will not be in my interest in the future because I do not know whether I will be up to the task.

• [Freedom] Always keep one foot outside
  I keep an eye on what is happening elsewhere. I ask people questions about their work, their daily life. I try to evolve through the doors that are open to me. I did not sign a life contract. My commitment is not blocking, and nothing prevents me from exploring new opportunities. I remain open to listening to proposals. I mentally project myself elsewhere at times to take my inner temperature. My skills are flexible and I can learn new things. I am aware of what is brewing in the sector and I remain on the lookout.

• [Pain] Look for pockets of pain in daily life (challenge, discomfort, complexity)
  I am asked to take on a new project and I drag my feet before accepting, without knowing why. I always cook the same thing and always go to the same restaurant. I do not feel comfortable with the new manager and their methods, which we are not used to. My workstation was changed and it is truly painful. Working with such-and-such collaborator is complicated because he understands nothing. Contracting with this client seems risky because he does not have a good reputation.

• [Freedom] Regularly take breaths of outside air (physical air, social air, intellectual air)
  I go to conferences on subjects that interest me or on current issues. I ask experts in the field. I do not hesitate to read on varied topics to open the field of my beliefs and knowledge. I meet new people regularly. I meet people from a professional sector diametrically opposed to mine. I walk in the forest or in parks. I listen to myself mentally while walking. I listen to soothing music to recover my inner breath. I go into new environments regularly. I try to change my habits from time to time.

• [Pain] Accept the chaotic succession of the trial-error path
  I tried such-and-such way of managing a collaborator without success. My commercial proposal was refused and I do not understand why. This is the fourth recruitment interview I have done that goes well and receives no answer. This is the third time I have tried to make a lemon tart, but the taste is weird. I do not know whether keeping the mustache is a good idea. The road is congested and I wonder whether it is a good idea to take the coastal road. Using the carrot-and-stick method to educate children does not seem to work.

• [Freedom] Keep in mind the feeling of freedom, that soft perfume of the infinity of possibilities
  I remember with nostalgia the time when I could do whatever I wanted without constraint or responsibility. I read biographies of famous people, of the greatest entrepreneurs or most well-known political figures. I watch videos about other cultures and landscapes. I catch myself dreaming of being someone else, living something else.

A Few Words of Conclusion

Managing pain means first becoming aware of it, putting words on it, and leaving the helplessness of pure feeling in order to surf on the strength of consciousness and then action. Understanding the signal, accepting it as it is, and acting on it with benevolence toward oneself. Embracing freedom means opening oneself entirely to what lies beyond our bubble of immediate proximity, letting oneself drink from the strange complexity and richness of the world, and staying open to everything that may happen in order to live a full and thrilling life.

Good luck to everyone.

Important Note

This article is guaranteed 100% human, GPT-free.