Asides

The Pain Box

Bill Ramsey, climber, philosopher
and the man behind “The Pain Box.”

In our local public radio’s member magazine, Desert Companion, Phil Hagen wrote a fantastic profile of climber and philosophy professor Bill Ramsey. Short of becoming a member, I haven’t a clue as to how you can get your hands on this article, but you should.

Ramsey is a top sport climber in his late 40s who regularly out-performs climbers half his age. He is also a highly respected philosophy professor who spent nearly two decades teaching at Notre Dame before coming to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to enjoy the area’s great year-round climbing opportunities.

As an elite athlete and respected scholar, Ramsey brings a great deal of credibility to the mental side of outdoor sports. One part of the article introduces his theory on the “Pain Box.”

…with the premise that pain are suffering are unavoidable in life, Ramsey came up with a rectangle to represent the amount a person has at any given time. The key to the box is a dividing line that separates what Ramsey says are two “very different types of pain and suffering.” On the left “is all the pain associated with sacrifice and hard work,” whether mental fatigue from long hours of studying or physical fatigue from tremendous training sessions. On the right side is failure, and the frustration and disappointment that accompany it.

That may sound suspiciously like “No Pain, No Gain” on the surface, but the Pain Box is more practical self-improvement concept than T-shirt slogan. “One nice thing about the box, besides the clarity of the imagery,” Ramsey says, “is the way it quantifies something that is often nebulous, and this can be a great motivator.” Want less failure in life? Try a little more pain reallocation. And less failure means more reward, which leads to deeper pleasure in life.

Now we’re talking.

And, if that’s not enough for you, Ramsey does freakin’ brutal training sessions. One session involves the 145-lb. professor strapping on 60 pounds for multiple sets of finger tip pull-ups.

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