🔵 Less Pain, More Gain?

Most high performers get this wrong. They wear their emotional suffering like a badge of honor, convinced that feeling the full weight of failure is necessary for growth. You'll hear it everywhere: "No pain, no gain." "Champions are forged through adversity." "Embrace the struggle."

But what if this widely accepted wisdom is actually holding you back?

While there is certainly truth to this wisdom, the way most woud-be-high-peformers implement it sets them back more than it builds them up. Emotional baggage from past failures subtly undermines their future performance, rather than informing it. They replay bad beats, missed opportunities, and crushing defeats, telling themselves this mental torture is part of the learning process.

Performance coach Stephen Baker explains how the truly elite separate learning from suffering, and why this distinction might be the missing piece in your performance puzzle.

Coach’s Corner

If you believe that emotional suffering is necessary for building character and that you must "feel the pain" to genuinely learn from failure, this mindset may stem from (and contribute to) a hidden belief that undermines your performance and hinders your progress toward your goals.

Elite performers across every domain have mastered a different approach. They extract lessons from setbacks without carrying the emotional weight that paralyzes most people.

This skill separates consistent high performers from those trapped in cycles of rumination over past failures.

Your Subconscious Is Working Against You

Your brain makes up to 95% of decisions subconsciously. This evolutionary system kept your ancestors alive by helping them avoid threats. However, it struggles to align with modern performance challenges.

Consider a poker player who makes a correct bluff at a tournament final table. The bluff fails because the opponent happened to have a premium hand. Logically, the decision was sound. Your subconscious doesn't care about logic. It registers pain and creates aversion to future bluffing, even when it's profitable.

You see this everywhere. The striker who misses good chances starts avoiding goal-scoring positions. The entrepreneur who faces initial rejection becomes risk-averse with future projects.

Your safety mechanism becomes your performance prison.

The good news is that while these unwanted responses reside in the subconscious, hypnotherapy provides a scientifically validated methodology for bringing about change at a subconscious level.

Strategic Detachment Changes Everything

Elite performers don't avoid emotional pain. They process it differently.

Yes, they still feel the sting of failure, but they extract the lesson, then deliberately release the emotional attachment. Pain becomes information, not identity.

This isn't emotional numbness. It's intelligent emotional processing.

When you're in flow states, your brain downregulates the areas responsible for emotional rumination and self-referential thinking. You're motivated but not emotionally hijacked.

Strategic detachment mimics this neurological state through training.

The Real Work Happens Before Performance

You can't develop strategic detachment in the moment.

Elite performers do the work beforehand. They train their minds like athletes train their bodies.

Through techniques like hypnotherapy and visualization, they program their responses to adversity. When pressure hits, they execute according to plan rather than emotional impulse.

Navy SEALs exemplify this approach. They train to respond to setbacks with a single word: "good". This reframes adversity as an opportunity for growth and adaptation.

Olympic rower Steve Redgrave took this further. He learned to welcome the pain during races because he knew everyone else felt it too, and he could handle it better.

The Price Tag of Achievement

Anything worth achieving comes with an emotional price tag. You will feel discomfort. Your evolutionary mind wants to redirect you away from difficult challenges to avoid potential mental pain.

Elite performers train their minds to welcome negative emotions as part of the process. They understand that setbacks are inevitable, but carrying emotional baggage is optional.

The skill lies in engaging with failure constructively, then disengaging when emotional attachments no longer serve performance goals.

Your Starting Point

Recognition comes first. If you find yourself unable to let go of the emotional component of setbacks to the point where it affects future performance, you have work to do. Hypnotherapy is the most powerful technique for addressing these mental programs and upgrading your internal software.

Most people convince themselves that self-punishment helps them learn. They believe that without emotional suffering, they'll become complacent.

The opposite is true. Emotional baggage creates overreactions and poor decision-making. Clean analysis and forward-focused planning create consistent high performance.

Strategic detachment isn't about caring less. It's about caring more effectively. Your setbacks contain valuable information. Extract it, apply it, then move forward without the emotional weight that turns lessons into limitations.

Click Here To Learn More About Stephen’s Coaching

Primed Picks

🎯 Work with Our Coaches
Partner 1-on-1 with our Mindset & Performance coaching team to shatter plateaus and perform on-demand. Learn More and Apply

📱 Primed Mind App
Subscribe to Primed Mind and unlock 400+ Mindset Audios & Priming sessions. Get Started Now

♠️ A-Game Poker Book
Elliot’s blueprint for high-performance poker—learn the focus, tilt-proofing, and edge-maximizing tactics behind $250mm+ in earnings. Grab your copy