Last week we looked at how much our perspective informs our experience of pain, which you can read about here. This week we will look at how to make the shift from being a slave to your pain to being a disciple of it.
When pain is your MASTER, you are a slave to it.
Pain uses fear to paralyse you, and typically uses one of two root fears: the fear of rejection or the fear of failure. The fear tells you not to take any action and to stay exactly where and who you are — safe and comfortable.
This paralysing inaction disconnects you from your past, future, and the present, and keeps you disconnected from yourself and other people. Let me explain this a bit more.
Because of the fear of rejection or fear of failure, you build walls to create a sense of safety.
You may feel like you are protecting yourself, but these walls also block out all of the good stuff
and the isolation that was meant to protect you is now actually causing you to feel lonely.
The fear may also cause you to become alienated. You feel so different from other people that you start to avoid them because you fear that they will not accept you or may even reject you. When this happens you can feel lonely even when you are with other people.
When pain is your MENTOR, it challenges you to be a disciple of pain.
The pain then uses the uncomfortable friction to help you, guide you, and equip you to grow and heal. The friction between the past and the present can challenge you to take action. When you realise how the pain you have experienced in the past is causing you to show up in the present in unhealthy and unwanted ways, you are challenged to change that by healing from the pain of the past (read the article on slow pain here).
The friction between the present and the future, between where you are now and where you want to be, can also help you to take action (read the article on grow pain here). When you embrace the friction, it can be turned into energy to take action. You realise that you need that resistance to heal from your past and grow into your future.
I want to challenge you today to not be a slave to your pain. When it comes to the past, choose to take action. Stop and feel your slow pain. Talk to someone, read, engage with your pain and feel the feelings. Even if it is uncomfortable. By feeling it you can extract lessons from that pain in order to heal.
I want to challenge you today to not be a slave to your pain.
When it comes to the past, choose to take action. Stop and feel your slow pain. Talk to someone, read, engage with your pain and feel the feelings. Even if it is uncomfortable. By feeling it you can extract lessons from that pain in order to heal.
When it comes to the future, choose to feel grow pain. If there is a dream that you want to pursue, break it up into small steps and challenge yourself to take one little step today, even if there is friction and resistance. That friction will give you the energy that you need to grow.
Choose to make pain your mentor, and become a disciple of it.
CONSIDER / TAKE ACTION
Where have you built walls in your life that are also blocking the good stuff? Think about places in your life that could be linked to fear of rejection or failure.
Where do you need to feel your slow pain in order to grow?
Where do you need to feel your grow pain?
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