The Best Self-Help is Free: The Myth of "No Pain, No Gain"

A curious fallacy pervades our society - the idea that the quality of a good obtained is directly proportional to the sacrifice of goods, comfort, and convenience required in order to obtain it.

Mentalities exemplifying this false idea include the following.

Falsehood 1. Thinking that the price of a consumer good necessarily indicates its quality and the higher prices of certain goods are all accounted for by those goods' higher quality. Inversely, this mindset also holds that if a good is not highly priced, then it cannot be of a high quality.

Falsehood 2. Thinking that the amount of effort or labor put into a particular task is a direct indicator of its ultimate quality and value.

Falsehood 3. Thinking that an interpersonal relationship is not a truly strong or worthwhile relationship unless one or both parties are willing to spend colossal amounts of money on ostentatious gifts, occasions, and entertainments. Examples of this trend include expenditures on $10,000 engagement rings, $30,000 weddings, and $1000 wedding cakes that rarely get fully eaten and are not substantially different from particularly ornate $50 cakes.

Falsehood 4. Thinking that the pain involved in exercise or another physical task is directly proportional to the manner in which this task benefits the health and "moral fiber" of one's organism.

Falsehood 5. Thinking that the arcaneness and incomprehensibility of a work of literature is directly proportional to its "deeper" intellectual or "spiritual" value to the reader. This has led thousands of novelists, poets, academicians, and other men of letters to write in a deliberately obfuscating manner in order to be taken more seriously and esteemed the more for it!

Falsehood 6. Thinking that the difficulty, unpredictability, emotional immaturity, and cruelty of an instructor are directly proportional to the educational value of taking that instructor's course.

Falsehood 7. Thinking that one needs to renounce one's career ambitions to have a fulfilling family life, or to neglect one's family in order to have a successful career.

Falsehood 8. Thinking that proficiency in one discipline comes at the expense of proficiency in other fields. Someone thinking along these lines might conclude that being a "math person" automatically disqualifies one from being an "English person" or a "history person."

Falsehood 9. Thinking that the exclusivity and snobbery of a particular social circle are directly proportional to the value of the social interactions, intellectual stimulation, connections, and other benefits to be found in those circles.

Falsehood 10. Thinking that practical success is inversely proportional to one's moral virtues and resolve to adhere to one's principles.

For those holding to these falsehoods, I have good news. All that suffering is completely unnecessary to achieve the good things in life. To be sure, some good things in life do require hard work, delayed gratification, and a great degree of self-restraint. But none of things are the same as suffering or sacrifice - nor do they imply the need to suffer or to sacrifice.

Let us examine these falsehoods one by one and show why they are egregiously wrong.

Refutation of Falsehood 1. Market prices are based not on the use-value of a good to any individual consumer, but on the subjective valuations of consumers throughout the economy for the good in question. A stable market price, if it exists, takes into account the valuations of all the good's consumers - which may be greatly different from one' s own. I, for instance, would not pay a cent for an Abercrombie & Fitch T-Shirt and would likely have to be paid hundreds of dollars to wear one in public. Other people, however, seem to value these T-shirts enough to pay tens and even hundreds of dollars for them. On the other hand, much of the classical music that I would have paid large amounts of money to listen to, if necessary, is available for free on the Internet. The material, emotional, and intellectual value one gets from a consumer good will often have zero relation to its market price; the market price - in an unhampered market - is simply an indicator of roughly how much of the good is available and how much other consumers in the economy want it.

Instead of trying to obtain enjoyment by paying high prices - an effort doomed to fail and disappoint you - think about what you enjoy first and then try to purchase that enjoyment for the lowest possible price, if it is necessary to pay anything for it at all.

I strongly believe that the best things in life are free - from a monetary standpoint at least. Great art, music, and literature in the public domain, thousands of excellent online essays, and the ability to create more such works through a wide variety of open-source programs will cost you absolutely nothing. You do not need to pay for the "privilege" of exercising by going to a gym or joining expensive races. Rather, just go outside and walk or run. Moreover, the quality of the relationships you form with other people has virtually nothing to do with the money you spend on them or they on you. More on that later.

Refutation of Falsehood 2. The amount of labor put into a task is no indicator of its ultimate quality or value. It takes tremendous labor and expenditure of energy to dig a hole in the ground only to fill it back up again - but this ameliorates nothing in the human condition. On the other hand, a few words properly phrased can lead to the formation of a business deal that generates tremendous value for producers and consumers alike. Of course, hard work is a necessary means for the accomplishment of some values, but it is a means only, and its necessity is a technical and not a metaphysical fact. The degree of its necessity is specific to the task performed and not to the human condition generally.

Refutation of Falsehood 3. Relationships that could not have survived without large non-vital expenditures are not likely to survive even with those expenditures. After all, if one's fiancé(e) or spouse is so superficial as to threaten withdrawal from the relationship if he or she does not get that nearly or entirely useless $10,000 gift, then the degree of that person's intellectual and emotional attachment to the relationship was not strong to begin with. Rather, such a demanding partner is either highly exploitative or wholly immersed in Falsehood 1, the idea that the price of a good is a direct indicator of its quality. There is nothing inherently wrong with giving gifts or spending money on one's friends, family, and spouse, but this should never be the primary criterion on which relationships are evaluated. Rather, in any non-business interaction, all those attributes that money cannot buy are of foremost importance. A good conversation, the willingness to cooperate, time spent together, an understanding of one another's goals and values, and a willingness to provide emotional and intellectual support cannot be replaced or supplanted by lavish spending.

Refutation of Falsehood 4. Repeatedly burning oneself with a hot iron is intensely painful - much more so than the most challenging and exhausting form of exercise - and yet it does nothing to improve one's health or one's strength of character. On the other hand, experienced runners who have built up some endurance will often find their exercise pleasant and refreshing. So much for the "no pain, no gain" view of health and life.

Refutation of Falsehood 5. I challenge my readers to find the deeply profound meaning in the following highly avant-garde poem:

i am what x,
but (a + bi) is not dead --
tgffffffffffffffT!
so why is meaning the same as green is not?
** 63?

Give up? Perhaps it is because you are not sufficiently enlightened or attuned to the deeper meanings intended by far more creative and worthwhile minds than your own. Or perhaps it is because the lines above are complete nonsense that I just wrote on the fly. And yet comparable nonsense gets published or put up on museum walls all the time, to the adoration of hordes of critics and literati.

To see how silly it is to esteem a work based on its obscurity, difficulty, and incomprehensibility, visit the Postmodernism Generator, which will randomly construct an essay for you along the lines of what passes for "high philosophy" in academia today. This takes neither a lot of intelligence to create, nor a lot of intelligence to debunk. It is baffling, however, that so many people think that just because something is difficult, it therefore automatically must be worthwhile.

Refutation of Falsehood 6. The job of an instructor is to communicate information and skills to his students, not to make it difficult for students to obtain that information and skills. In fact, the best instructors are those who enable everyone to learn well what they have to teach. These are the most accessible instructors and the ones who encourage students to learn and facilitate ready intake of information, as opposed to punishing students for falling short of an arbitrarily high standard that they had no preparation for meeting in the first place. Moreover, good instructors tend to establish clear expectations of their students, in line with those students' abilities and prior performance. The students know well in advance what is required from them and have reasonable amounts of time to meet those requirements. Good instructors are kind and respectful to their students and do not mock, torment, or insult them - except when such conduct is understood by all sides to be mere inoffensive jesting. Instead of stressing their students, good teachers motivate their interest and their desires for self-improvement. Particularly draconian instructors who deliberately aim at being cruel and unpredictable virtually always have their own severe emotional problems and insecurities to deal with; this certainly makes them worse teachers, not better ones.

Refutation of Falsehood 7. Believing in a necessary tradeoff between family and career is a consequence of thinking that value and success are gained from a task in direct proportion to one's expenditure of effort on that task. Individuals who think this believe that they will not get anywhere in their careers unless they work for 12 hours a day, travel incessantly, and see spending virtually all their time away from their family as a necessary cost of the job. Individuals who choose to focus on family instead of work adopt the same view of what job success entails and simply embrace the other side of the coin - focusing on family without working to advance their careers.

But success at a job is not a function of time put in, but rather of value created. Every person has the ability to use his mind to discover ways of working more efficiently and bringing greater returns to himself and/or to his employers. Companies are now increasingly offering flexible working options - including working from home, which enables individuals to be paid on a per-hour basis but to finish a day's work in less than a typical workday's time - having the rest of the time to devote to their families or to themselves. There are even increasing prospects for earning money via the Internet itself - which has the potential to become a useful income supplement for many people, without requiring them to become separated from their families.

Likewise, spending time with one's family does not imply spending time unproductively or to no material benefit. Working together on a project, exercising together, or reading and discussing intelligent literature together can be of tremendous benefit to developing every family member's mind, skill set, and income-earning prospects. Moreover, one's family can be an excellent resource for advice, inspiration, and comfort. Family time need not mean lounging idly on the beach or watching a vapid television show. It can be active and intellectually reinforcing and can have beneficial external effects on one's career as well.

Refutation of Falsehood 8. Being extensively knowledgeable about one field does not make one less proficient or less inclined toward pursuing other fields. Indeed, learning virtually anything of value has the primary effect of fortifying one's mind and making it more adept at assimilating still other information. The more one knows, the easier it becomes to learn new information and skills - as one has a greater probability of connecting the new material to already known material, thereby increasing the likelihood of the new material's retention.

Refutation of Falsehood 9. People who deliberately go to great lengths to exclude others from their company are likely themselves not good company at all. Rather, exclusivists tend to be narrow-minded, prejudiced, and utterly ignorant of the benefits resulting from association with people of a wide variety of backgrounds, interests, skills, and persuasions. In their self-inflicted isolation and marginalization, the exclusivist snobs are unlikely to offer you anything of genuine value.

Refutation of Falsehood 10. Those who believe in the impossibility of success without acting viciously, dishonestly, or in disregard of one's own ethical principles do not tend to be successful for long. They might swindle their way into a few lucrative deals, but they never develop the single attribute most crucial to lasting success - a good reputation. Without a reputation for being principled, virtuous, and genuinely concerned about the welfare of one's customers, co-workers, subordinates, and superiors, one will not get far in the business world. On the other hand, a person who displays genuine integrity is seen as a welcome change from the stereotypical "wheeling and dealing" businessman. He is likely to attract associates and clients much like himself - and the virtuous cycle of integrity will thereby build on itself and pervade the market. This explains why most business operations are honest, responsible, and respectful - without any official external oversight.

The "no pain, no gain" philosophy inflicts tremendous pain on millions of people, while resulting in little or no gain. It is time to abandon it conclusively and to begin to live well by focusing on the pursuit of values rather than on undertaking the "necessary" amount of sacrifices.

Read all chapters of The Best Self-Help is Free.