This Billionaire Had a Root Canal Without Novocaine to ‘See If He Was a Badass.’ You Don’t Have to Go Nearly That Far
Want to develop greater mental fortitude? Want to prove something to yourself? Small challenges work as well as crazy ones.
EXPERT OPINION BY JEFF HADEN @JEFF_HADEN
I was probably seven or eight years old and needed to have a cavity filled. My mother asked if there was an additional cost for Novocaine. The dentist looked puzzled and said, “Um, yes….”
My mother looked at me. I knew what I should say. “I don’t need it,” I told the dentist, and raw-dogged every filling until I was an adult. Did they hurt? Oh, yeah. (But not as badly as you might think. And once the drilling stopped, the pain quickly went away.)
I didn’t realize it at the time (the
I didn’t realize it at the time (the point was to save money, not teach a life lesson), but I learned something about myself.
That makes me a little like Sequoia Capital chairman Doug Leone, who recently said he once had a root canal without Novocaine. (Novocaine is rarely used anymore, but just like “Kleenex” is a blanket term for a tissue, people of a certain age still call any local oral anesthetic “Novocaine.”)
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Why? He didn’t want to be late for a meeting, and he wanted to see how tough he really was. “In other words, (am I) a fake badass that has this envelope nobody could tell, or am I really a badass on the inside?” he said.
According to Leone, facing fear provides a challenge
According to Leone, facing fear provides a challenge that, when overcome, gives him a sense of confidence and security.
In some ways, I get it. I once did 5,000 pushups in a day (as part of my 100,000 pushup year), mostly to see if I could do it. It was fun to do something most people would never consider doing. It was fun to do something I wasn’t sure I could do.
Source: www.inc.com
