Electric guitar tip

I wish I had known when I first started that a callous is your friend.....I remember the first time I had to really start learning techniques like slides and bends and got into hammer ons and pull offs.....more to the point my first time bending one of the strings it felt like it was going to slice my finger......I just kept doing this over and over off and on for days.....seemed like weeks now it's almost like my fret hand has little string groves in it lol....