How to leverage your pain as a servant

What if you viewed:

• Pain as fuel?
• Hurt as something to look forward to?
• Disappointments as your servant?

How would that change your outlook on life? On your relationships? On your business?

Do me a favor and indulge me until you finish reading this article. I want you to question why you believe that:

• Pain is something to be avoided
• Heartache is bad
• Struggle is something negative

No, I want you to really ask yourself why you believe that.

It’s because along this journey of life you have picked up messages from the people and society surrounding you. Don’t worry, I have too. I call this “mass thinking.”

Did you ever hear your mom say, “Money doesn’t grow on trees”? If you heard that example of “mass thinking” often, and you heard enough other people say it too, you probably accepted it as fact and never stopped to question it.

Or, what if you heard your dad always say, “People can’t be trusted”? If so, you probably inadvertently picked up that concept as a child and have never bothered to question it.

What makes us suffer as humans are our own thoughts and the mass thinking we’ve adopted. According to master motivator Tony Robbins, most people don’t ever master their thoughts, and that’s why they are in anguish.

Best-selling author Jack Canfield, says, “Thoughts are simply programmed. We are conditioned by our parents, school, church, culture and so on.” Because of this conditioning, we rarely revisit thoughts or beliefs that no longer serve us.

So, how do you, in a sense, re-program your long-held, deep-seated beliefs?

According to motivational speaker Brian Tracy, you simply need to question the thoughts you currently believe in.  For example, let me ask you two questions.

1. Do you believe it is possible for a person to become a millionaire?
2. Now, do you believe it is possible for you to become a millionaire?

I’m pretty sure the majority of you said yes to the first question but no to the second question. Why?

Why do you believe that?

If you simply change that belief to the belief that it is possible, you will unlock your subconscious and allow it to look for ways for you to become a millionaire. But, if you continue to believe that it is not possible for you, you will never unlock your potential power to find a way to make it happen.

So, how can you leverage your negative, harmful, painful thoughts to serve you instead of hinder you?

Here are five ways you can do so, according to leadership expert Robin Sharma. He calls it his five “ings.”

1. Journaling – Sharma said on his YouTube channel that journaling saved his life. He believes the antidote to pain is gratitude, so he writes down what he is grateful for. In addition, he says that you can never escape your pain, but that you can only feel yourself through the pain. Journaling allows you to process the pain and use it as a servant and not as a cruel task master.
2. Talking – Sharma says that talking releases the energy of the pain. If you don’t talk about how you feel, that energy stays inside you and you end up making yourself sick. When we repress emotions, we only hurt ourselves.
3. Communing – Nature is something you must commune with. You have to go outside and walk, breathe and be at one with nature. Being in nature gives you much-needed perspective on whatever ails you.
4. Moving – You have to move in order to improve. When you exercise, you will shift your psychology, your neurobiology and your metabolic rate by releasing endorphins, which are natural motivational drugs, in your brain.
5. Resting – We can only get better if we recharge. Studies show that it is only during sleep that the body and brain have a chance to do their repair work- to undo the subtle damage suffered by millions of cells over the course of each day. So, get some rest.

Instead of viewing pain as something to avoid, try to look at it as something to embrace. Pain, disappointment, hurt and heartache are just natural parts of your process of becoming a stronger version of yourself.

And remember, whatever you are going through now is only temporary. It may last a while, but eventually, this too shall pass, and you will be a stronger person because of it.

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