I imagine that you will be more than familiar with the idea that the world is not really what it is, but that it is as you see it. Surely you understand the importance of being aware of the way you perceive things and influence this, to learn to live better.
Another thing is to avoid negative thoughts. Today we are going to strengthen in you the muscle. Do you think? How to overcome pain?
How to overcome pain?
Today I come to talk to you how to overcome pain.
The way you tell yourself the things that happen to you from the “glasses. You wear to see everything around you.
I’m going to invite you to reflect deeply.
I am going to propose that you dare to experience that you can change your life by first changing what you feel about it (as it is now) and not the other way around, as they always taught us.
They trained us to change our circumstances and thus achieve happiness and well-being.
I tell you: Learn to turn this happening right now into something good (or something that makes sense to you), and everything will move to offer you a growth opportunity that will surpass your previous expectations.
This is changing from within. This is, in reality, the only change.
When you change your way of looking at things, the things you look at change.
I know it sounds abstract and difficult to apply. And I know that I propose something ambitious.
Possibly your first resistance has already moved. Let me tell you something:
I have done it (and many more people you too).
I have done it with several things, but my greatest achievement was to overcome something concrete and tangible: a disease considered chronic.
Yes, I turned my pain into an opportunity for learning and self-discovery. I overcame mental limits, I changed my “real” (or external) life and the disease, and its symptoms disappeared.
I’ll tell you everything in this article. Keep reading.
The pain
There are aspects of your life that hurt you, right?
Maybe you’re living a sweet and quite pleasant stage right now, and luck seems to smile on you. Maybe, on the other hand, you are going through one of those nights of the soul …
Surely there is some pain right now in your life.
It may be a specific issue that torments you, a memory that you prefer to avoid, an unresolved issue that weighs on you, a part of you that you are not proud.
This pain may emerge at some unexpected moments and then disappear, at least in appearance … Or it may seem to be pursuing you at all times.
In any case, what I know for sure is that you feel pain.
And what I know also is that you try to avoid it.
You try to avoid painful experiences and get closer to those that make you feel good. Feel only those sensations that are pleasing to you.
And I also know that this trend is a big part of the problem.
I know what seems logical. And I’m not saying that, to a certain extent, this is not the most sensible thing.
We have “sold” this attitude as normal and all the messages we receive by active and passive from our environment, go in this direction.
I clarify how I understand the pain
It may seem counterintuitive at first. I’m just asking you to give her a chance, okay?
Look at it this way: the way you’ve done things so far has taken you to the exact situation you’re in today. If you think there are things in your life that can improve ... It is clear that there are mistakes that can be corrected.
Since this article deals with your relationship with pain, it seems interesting to me to clarify what I understand by this term, at least as far as this article is concerned.
During the rest of the post, when I talk about pain, be clear I am referring to pain in any of its forms. The basis is the same, regardless of its manifestations.
That is to say, I mean pain when I avoid any dissatisfaction or discomfort: it can already be suffering, fear, the feeling of emptiness, disappointment, anxiety …
But, it is more: Since I do not believe in the total separation of the aspects that make up our life, I am going to put in the same “bag,” other factors of possible discomfort, that are not directly emotional. Possible examples of this may be economic deprivation, work problems, or physical health.
I believe that all areas of our life are related to each other, and that one influences and reflects the other.
I want to emphasize the subject of health because it is the example I will expose you with my story.
I want to clarify, for example, that I observe an obvious relation of the development of physical illness to the existence of internal conflict (often unconscious) unresolved.
This idea can raise many blisters, although I also know that it is beginning to be accepted by many.
Even so, I know the difficulty of suffering a disabling physical illness or pain and understand and accept how you are doing that to yourself.
So bringing you my experience on this, it can be useful especially if you suffer or have suffered any major physical ailment.
What I tell you, nobody has explained it to me. I’ve lived it in my skin, that’s why I think I have a certain responsibility to spread a message that has yet to be discovered.
In any case, we will continue talking about this in this post.
For now, I just wanted to clarify that when I’m talking about pain, you can also include body pain, if you have it.
Our instinct for survival is sometimes a brake
If you look, you have been conditioned all your life so that your decisions and the steps you take in life, take you away from pain and bring you closer to well-being.
As I said before, to some extent, this is reasonable. It is a matter of survival.
However, we are complex beings with needs beyond our survival.
We have more subtle needs that evolve with us: Needs such as realization, need to endow our lives with meaning, to improve ourselves, to leave our mark on the world …
If you want to live in coherence with this other type of need that may not stop growing in you, you need to transcend your survival instinct.
And notice that I do not say “obviate.” That instinct has its function and deserves our attention. However, if you let it dominate all your decisions, it will be greatly limiting.
Have you noticed that sometimes your fear is triggered by an unknown situation, even if there is no real risk? However, your flight instinct is as powerful as if it were.
If at that moment, you obeyed that instinct without further criteria, you would be renouncing your freedom and your potential for improvement and growth.
Well, it is time to question whether it is always advisable to avoid pain.
The avoidance of pain
Trying to avoid pain constantly is an instinctive reaction. As we have just commented, to react automatically is to renounce, to a large extent, your freedom and the development of your maximum potential.
Moreover, taking into account that most of the time, there is no danger as such.
So, I think it’s interesting that you seriously consider to what extent you have internalized this habit of avoiding pain, in what areas it manifests itself and you ask yourself in depth if that behavior is really necessary.
Let me explain: Imagine you have to decide if to leave to live away from home (it’s something that I’m dealing with personally right now).
There are many factors to consider. And it’s great that you do a review of all this and try to choose the best for you.
However, if you have a very automated reaction to avoid pain, it is possible that everything that is unknown to you and gives you some fear is quickly ruled out, or almost.
There may be many points in favor and many opportunities if you decide to delve into uncertainty. However, this will involve some degree of pain and moving in that direction, goes hand in hand with accepting and tolerating that pain.
There are no shortcuts in this. Almost always (actually I think always) all growth implies pain, to a greater or lesser extent. It implies crossing our limits, facing fears …
When we grow and evolve, it is because something new inside us has been born. For this new to be born, surely something old must die first. And that “death,” unfailingly, causes pain.
Is that bad? Not necessarily.
So why do you review in the next few days how many of your decisions are based on avoiding pain, and you rethink them a bit?
If, within you, there is a desire to grow, to develop and discover unknown worlds in you … If you feel the passion for living intensely… I invite you to challenge your automatism to avoid pain in every decision you make.
I firmly believe in the importance of reviewing in depth how we make our decisions to go putting more and more coherence between our hidden longings and our “real” or physical life.
This is why I focus my work on conscious decision-making so that you learn to direct your life from your inner wisdom and not from the conditions that you received from outside.
But let’s go back to the pain. I’m going to tell you how I transcended my pain by not running away from him and having the courage to “hug” him once and for all.
My pain and I
I’m going to tell you my story in a very summarized way so that you understand the idea that I want to transmit to you and learn to relate to your pain in a new way that takes you beyond your limits.
If you want to know more about how I lived through this process of transformation, I leave you here an article in which I tell it all: My Great Decision.
This happened at the beginning of 2014, now about three years ago.
About ten years ago he suffered from incapacitating bone pain, specifically in the joints of the hips. About five years ago I had been diagnosed with a “chronic” disease: ankylosing spondylitis.
I entered the traditional medical circuit; I began to take a lot of medication (all only palliative, because there was no cure) and to be all day in the consultation of different specialists.
With all this, I did nothing but get worse, and each time I felt sicker. I could not disconnect from my illness and had gradually identified myself with the role of the victim in this whole affair.
Physically, it was wrong, and I saw myself increasingly limited. The pains were unbearable.
Finally, I began to realize that I had entered a kind of hamster wheel and, after about two years of treatment, I left everything: I stopped going to the doctor without explaining. I stopped taking medication, and I stopped listening to the advice of people around me who told me I was crazy.
I did not get worse. I improved a little. I began to take care of my habits and to take responsibility for my well-being.
However, the disease and pain were present and often prevented me from making a “normal” life.
I inquired about personal development and spirituality since I was twelve or thirteen, so I had read a lot about the relationship between emotional conflicts and physical illnesses.
Another issue, however, was to translate all this theory into practice.
Was I doing this and was it in my power to heal myself?
Every time I saw more clearly that the answer was yes, but … How?
And what had to come arrived: A crisis so big for which I had no answer, I had to “surrender.”
That word (surrender) is stigmatized in our society. However, well understood, it is a gateway to a world of new options.
I do not speak of resigning. I speak of a humble and sincere surrender. I speak of a state in which you release what you think you know, and you open up to find new answers.
And the pain became a bridge to me
Now that I look at it with hindsight, you can say that, throughout the process of my illness, there was
I interpreted my illness as something bad and unfair, and all my behavior was aimed at avoiding or minimizing it. I did not want to think about her; I avoided the situations in which my disability was evident, I planned my activities to avoid the pain and, in short, I was more and more conditioned by my illness.
Quick conclusion? Resistance to something gives more strength to that something. It makes you obsess about it, that you are afraid …
If I look more deeply (although this post does not give to go into this), I can see that the underlying conflicts that I unconsciously dragged from childhood, were also based on avoiding pain (in this case, emotional).
There came a moment (in March 2014) that all my life seemed to sink: I had a couple of crisis, I lost my job, family problems, and, of course, I suffered an outbreak of the illness that had me in bed three weeks in a row.
I could no longer resist and felt the pain (physical and emotional) in all its harshness.
I stopped looking for alternatives to find myself better. I even thought there was no solution for me. I came to consider dealing with a permanent disability (which I had never done before).
From that enormous pain, something different emerged: an unknown force. If I had nothing left to lose, I could try everything.
In short, I’ll tell you that I took a backpack and, in a matter of a few days, I left to do the Camino de Santiago.
I limped and raged in pain, and I carried 13 kilos on my shoulders (it was cold and I needed a lot of luggage) to walk alone for eight hundred kilometers. Of course, I had not trained previously.
It was my way of telling my pain that I was not afraid of him anymore.
Everyone told me I was crazy. But I felt freer than ever.
I walked for more than a month. I suffered a lot of pain for the first few days. But I felt happy like never before. It is difficult to explain.
I am walking
Little by little, the pain was decreasing.
It gave me time to reflect deeply, realize many things and decide big changes in my life.
I became another person and healed inside and out.
I started a new life. I formed a family and my online project began to set in my mind.
Now I have my little things, my fears, and some loose symptoms from time to time. But now I know the strength that I have inside. And that accompanies me and pushes me in every decision I make.
It’s what I want for you.
Conclusion
When you dare to face your pain and embrace it without fear, you are telling life and yourself that you are bigger than him. You are rising above your shadow and, in that course, you develop strengths and abilities that up to now you did not know you had.
When everything has already passed, and you look back, you realize that this pain came into your life to teach you something to make you grow.
I can say very loudly that my illness is the best thing that has happened to me in my life. He pushed me to rise above her and the person she had been up to that moment.
This opened before my infinity of doors that, otherwise, would have remained closed. Surely you know what I’m talking about. Surely you have experienced it to some extent.
And my question now is: Do you dare to challenge your limits and take a step towards your pain to discover who you are capable of becoming?
