Is Pain and Suffering a Requirement for Success?

Regular Billionaire

I recently read in a article and in social media about a Jensen Huang talk at Stanford Business School. I would agree with people that he is probably one of the most normal billionaires personality wise.

I mean, he grew up in Kentucky for pete’s sake. I would know as I am from Ohio.

Plus you add the fact that he is not weird or anything like other billionaires I will not mention here. Personally, I respect him as a CEO because he is probably the best performing CEO in the world right now and he helped found the company he is leading right now (Nvidia). Not many people are good at taking the company through the startup stage and the leading the company once it’s out of it initial 10 year startup period. This because being a startup founder and a CEO of major cooperation requires an entirely different skill set. My guess why many very smart founders can not do it is because they lack the decision making ability and efficiency or productiveness the CEOs need to have. My theory to this is that for founders that have dropped out of college they did not fully form their thinking skills and learning how to learn, which would be instrumental in making good decisions as a CEO. One reason to go college I guess. For founders that graduated college who became CEOs that struggled, maybe they struggled because there was just too much to learn, which speaks to the efficiency of these successful CEOs.

Nvidia 10 Year Stock Return

Jensen Huang may seem like a regular guy, but if you look some things that he says they are not so normal. I mean just look at the numbers above, can you be a regular guy and the company stock perform that well over a 10 year period. During the talk at Stanford, he said something interesting that probably surprised a lot of students. He joked and said “I wish you upon ample doses of pain and suffering”. It seems to me that Huang thinks that Stanford students are so privileged and do not have to go through much pain and suffering in their lives. For this reason they will not be ready when pain and suffering comes when while striving to reach their goals. He seems to be saying, I have suffered in the past and I made through then, so I can do the same now. Although, if you are someone who has not been through anything your not equipped to have success. That last part, success, is not what he was talking about but from what I read success and greatness were used interchangeably in articles talking about what he said. Huang was talking about greatness, the two are very different from each from each other.

My opinion is that success does not require the pain and suffering that Huang is talking about. Success is something that people can achieve God willing if they work hard, and they use their God given abilities. It does not have to require any suffering. Look at the Stanford students, you could argue that they have achieved a measure of success just being at Stanford, a world leading research institution. Although, if he is right and that he has “cleaned more toilets than all of the Stanford MBA students combined” then he might have a point. I just think he underestimates the degree everybody suffers. In Christian circles it is said all humans live in a broken and fallen world. Therefore, you can not go through life without suffering. If Huang is right though, then I’m upset because in that case there are people in life who will get by without much suffering. Personally, I think he has missed the mark on this statement because although he was joking, he seems to really believes that if you wanted to be like him, you have to have gone through ample suffering in the past.

In reality, I think the truth is that in order to be great you have to be willing to suffer. This is exactly what Rafael Nadal says in his book. As easily the greatest clay court tennis player of all time, he says to win at the highest levels you have to be willing to suffer. Pretty remarkable, and I agree with this statement. As broken as professional tennis is, the principles that create success as a pro directly apply to business. Huang is not a great CEO because he has suffered in his life and his character is such that he can overcome struggles. More aptly, he is the kind of man who is willing to suffer.

So, for a student reading this, you do not need to have gone through crazy adversity in the past to be great at something. Instead it’s important that you are willing to suffer and respond well to adversity, which is a personal decision.

Is He Even Right About Stanford Students?

I would venture to say that if Huang believes that Stanford students are privileged (something most would probably agree with anyway) then that like he said it could limit them. But is that actually true. I do not think so. There are many types of students that go to schools like GSB, and not all of them are well off or have had easy lives. Some of them probably have suffered significantly more the Jensen Huang at their age.

That raises two important points. Why (1) would you wish pain and suffering on anybody, and (2) is the suffering that Jensen Huang experienced as a founder and CEO actual suffering. For the former I think it is just so wrong to call Jenson Huang a normal guy because he was basically saying suffering builds character like it is something to be desired. First of all that is not true all the time, so that is bizarre. Suffering like loss, failing health, or poverty makes some people bitter people. On the other hand, if you chose to start a business, and you run that business for along time as it grew that is a choice and like my Dad says, life is choice driven. There is a difference between suffering that found you because you live in a broken world versus suffering you chose. That is what for me is messed up about Huang’s statement.

Therefore, I do not think Huang is right about Stanford students. Not all students are doing private equity, tech, or business consulting and have led cushy lifestyles the last several years of their lives. Some students come from nothing, and have various struggles of all kinds.

Struggles In My Own Life

Even in my own life there have things that have happened that you would not believe. For example, while I was in Law School I spent time in the hospital against my will. I literally spent five whole days in the hospital and I did not even want to be in there. Essentially, I pushed myself too hard to complete final exams in my the third semester of law school. Several days after, during winter break, I went through a period where I just layed in bed but could not get a bit of sleep. This continued for three days, and each day my behavior became more abnormal. I was becoming more and more detached from reality, and I was becoming more paranoid at the same time. I thought myself just being around endangered my family, so I was going to take a car and drive away and therefore save my family. The thing is I hadn’t slept in days, and didn’t know where I was going. If I had actually been able to get keys to drive away, it could have been disastrous. My family, realizing I was acting very strange removed access to my car keys, so I could not drive.

I was eventually taken to a hospital for the most silly reason. My parents thought I might have Covid and was some psychological effect from it (after all Covid was not well understood) and wanted me to get tested. I was taken to Ohio State Medical Hospital, where I was tested for Covid and that test ultimately came back negative. The thing was after I was tested for Covid, I was brought inside the Hospital for more questioning, and then I was pink slipped. That means I lose all freedom for 48 hours. The problem was I was pink slipped without me understanding what was going on or why it was happening, and neither did my family. In fact, I did not talk to my mom until three days later. There probably should be more consideration around revealing health information about adults to their parents because although there are laws like HIPPA, I did not bring myself to the Hospital but my family did, and they did not even know what happened to me.

After the 48 hours had elapsed, I was brought to another facility in the hospital for patients who were struggling with mental health problems. The non-politically correct term is a psych ward. In this place, I was convinced to take drugs because they would make me better, but I was not told what I was taking. In fact what was given to me was a drug called Abilfy. It is a popular anti-psychotic which alters the neurochemistry in your brain so that some of neurotransmitters function more normally. This drug, has various side effects that can be bad depending on how much of the drug you take. For example, it alters your eating patterns causing many people gain weight, and uncontrollable body movements or restlessness. There are a laundry lists of other side effects as well. I to this day have no idea what dosage I recieved of the drug in the hospital, but it worked and I returned to normal.

Mayo Clinic’s Explanation of Side Effects for Abilify

I am thankful that the doctors were able to solve the problem, but they could not diagnose me with anything other than unspecified psychosis. This means that although, I clearly went through psychosis, they could not say I was bipolar, or schizophrenic because I did not show those characteristics. Basically, doctors can not clearly articulate what is going wrong. I continued on a relatively small dose of the Abilify after I got out of the hospital. Which has gone up and down over time, but I have been fine.

I Saw People That Were Worse

The thing that was most disturbing about my experience was not actually what I went through, but what I saw other people going through. I saw people in their 20’s and old that were on these drugs that were basically making them zombies in my opinion. Yeah, some in there like me were restless and could barely sit down to watch TV. The drug(s) were making us restless. Some of the people though, it seemed to me they were in there indefinitely, because they had nowhere to go and they were not improving. It was sad to see. As I wanted out immediately, and it took two days for me to be let out because one of the days was a holiday. In my opinion it was ridiculous, because my stuff was confiscated and basically all I could do was walk around all day and try to watch TV which I could not even do because I could stay still.

My Conclusion

No, I do not think pain and suffering a requirement for success, some people become successes without any real suffering. I do think it is a requirement for greatness. I also believe that you should not wish pain and suffering on anybody. Some people do not always become better people from pain and suffering, and become worse. The truth is that if you want to be great at something, you do have to be willing to suffer but this is not the same as what Jensen Huang was talking about. Also, Stanford students may not be as privileged as people may think, you really should not make assumptions. Lastly, in my own life I have suffered, and let me tell you I do not wish that on anybody.