No pain, no gain!

This saying is well-known. If we want something, we need to take effort to get it. If we want something special, then we need to take big effort and this can come along with “pains”, with going beyond the comfort zone. Taking effort is the normal case to reach aims.

Now, the point is that there is another meaning in this saying which is of even greater importance.

People are sitting in their comfort zone, doing nothing, just feeling comfortable. There is no pain and there is no gain. So, when you want to move yourself or others, then you must offer gain and the chance to avoid pain.

This is something which is valid for life in general, for the spiritual development but also for business. You must offer something to win, a real value and in best case at the same time you help to avoid pain.

Let´s take spiritual progress. For 99% of all people spiritual progress is not about avoiding pain while enlightenment and higher experiences are “nice to have” but not “a must have”. So gain is offered, but the effort is too high while there is no pain to avoid. The result is that 99% of all people do not care about spiritual progress, do not invest the necessary energy to achieve it. There is only 1% who cannot live without spiritual progress, who suffer when they cannot develop themselves and this one percent makes real progress as progress is fundamentally important for them. They cannot bear the idea to leave this world without any progress.

And this is the reason why spiritual development is a nice topic for conversations but not more.

Now, let´s take spiritual people who try to sell spiritual services or products. Spiritual services/products are “nice to have” but not “a must”. They do not help to avoid any pain and so it is a matter of choice to buy them or not. And for this reason people who sell spiritual things often fail in business. No pain, no gain. Another point in this regard is, that spiritual people don´t have money and this makes spiritual business fail completely. Good intentions, good services and good products are not the key for success here.

When we look at business then we can see three types of products or services:

1. The product offers real value and helps to avoid pain. 100% of people buy it.
2. The product pretends to offer value and to help avoiding pain. It corresponds to the ideas of the customers “Quick help, no need for changes.” 90% of people buy it. 10% are too smart to get entrapped. It is the dominating business.
3. The product may offer value but does not help to avoid pain. 99% of people ignore it.

For everyone of us, this is very important to understand. Most spiritual people are entrapped in point 3, trying to sell something good but people do not feel the pain to need it. Point 2 is the big “esoteric” market where every kind of stuff is sold because people believe in it, want to believe. It is a great desire to believe together with avoiding all kinds of pains. And point 1 is professional business. If you want to make professional business then offer products and services which offer real value and help to avoid pains at the same time.

Let´s take a simple example. Let´s imagine that you are a professional painter. So you can tell your clients “You know how exhausting it can be to paint a room, how the paints spread everywhere, how bothering it is to prepare your room before and to clean up afterwards and how much time and effort it takes. YOU CAN AVOID these problems. Let me do the job for you in a most professional way. I take care that your room is painted perfectly so that you enjoy your living space. Imagine you sitting in your freshly painted room, seeing the wonderful colors as the perfect background for your furniture and receiving congratulations from your friends for this great taste.”

Here you start with the pain and you end with the happiness of the client. This is the key for success. It is the key for success in all aspects of life. If you want to make progress, then think first about all the pain and then about the gain. This activates a lot of energy for development and changes.

No pain, no gain!