As a child, you touched something hot, and it burned you. That pain gave you a piece of information: be careful touching hot things.

When you sign up to run a marathon, you are signing up for pain. But whether or not you keep running is up to you. It’s been said that “pain is inevitable but suffering is optional”. You can choose pain without choosing suffering.

Pain is information, and information is painful. Rewiring your brain is not a frictionless process. Some knowledge can only be discovered the hard way.

The sooner you can convert pain into knowledge, the sooner you can experience the next useful pain. Don’t put yourself through the same pain too many times. To access new information you must experience new pains.

They say “knowledge is power”. If pain is information, then pain can be converted to power. To do so, you must learn to control your suffering, accept that scars are beautiful.

If you felt pain, ask what information it gave you. If that information was useful, seek the next pain. You are learning.