Learn not to shy away from pain, but to experience it as a sensation like any other. The size of your heart, and the strength of your character come from your willingness to experience pain - be it emotional or physical, the two are intertwined. Every moment we experience, every thought, every emotion, is experienced and remembered in tandem with our total bodily sensation in that moment.

Three practices have helped me develop pain management - what makes these special is that they arent ways of being, or abstract ideas, but rather things you do.

Vipassana Meditation , in which you sit and meditate for 10 days - the pain from sitting of my knees was so extreme, but the teachers taught me how to examine the pain with my mind, and experience it as one of many sensations. They teach equinamity, not having preference for one kind of experience over another. It is taught around the world, its non-profit and non-religious.

The Russian martial art Systema: pain management is an integral part of training. We punch each other in the stomach, and learn the correct way of dealing with it through casting off self pity, standing up straight and breathing techniques. There are also classes in which the instructors hit us with a cossack whip. Mentally, its best not to anticipate, the dread being worse than the pain itself, and then there are breathing techniques to manage the pain.

Stoicism, the ancient greek philosophy of living: The stoics teach many things, but for me, the most important teaching is that there are things we can control and things we cannot. By ignoring the things we cannot control, we can focus our energies on the things we can control. In my opinion Meditations by Marcus Aurelius should be on the sidebar. To be a man, one must cultivate virtue.

We are taught to be comfort seeking. If you picture life as garden with mildly electrified fences either side of the paths, imagine how much freedom you would gain if you were willing to tolerate an electric shock in order to get off the path.

When I first encountered these practices, I would see them as sadistic or masochistic, but now I see how they increase freedom, strength of character, and courage.

Our capacity for self improvement and overcoming adversity is not fixed, but can be increased through training and selective, progressive exposure to stress. We can generalize this to include improvements to our character and perseverance. Adversity strengthens not just our particular abilities, but our very soul.

Edit: There is a scene in the 1984 film Dune which is relevant to this subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTjUzT-xto4