The process of getting pain by the balls is one of increasing the capacity for emotional digestion. And the stronger your digestion, the more you can “eat”, which is to say, the more life experience becomes richer and wider and deeper. The less you have just cause to fear, the more you can see and feel and hear and touch and smell and taste and grok.
Conversely, avoiding experience to avoid pain is a walling in and dimming down.
To use a word currently popular in self help books (along with fuck) I am getting touch with my inner badass.