Choose How Pain Moves You
It is no damn secret; we have all experienced situations in our lives where pain has hit us and hit us hard as hell. These situations may have been forced upon us or maybe even the concussive blowback of a decision we had made but one thing remains true, we must choose how that pain moves us. In everything in life, it comes down to choices. Either within a situation and how we handle the direct decision at hand or how we handle the aftermath of that situation, but the choice is ours.
Pain has a way of moving us, negatively or positively. Regardless of the situation, it pushes us in either direction and does not leave us without some scrapes and bruises along the way. Think about it for a second, there are people that have had a traumatic experience and choose to use alcohol or drugs to numb the pain and spiral their lives out of control and then there are those with similar experiences that go the complete opposite way. It is all about how you choose to allow pain to move you.
So, what can you do?
1. Find your landing zone.
The most difficult thing for someone to do after a painful experience is to visualize their future. That future scares the living shit of you. The traumatic experience modifies how you view the world at hand and your brain wants to not only isolate itself but push away thinking about how things just might shake out for your future.
It is imperative that you take a moment and visualize where you want your life to be in the future, in a positive notion. While pain tends to make us negative, fight this and figure out where you want to be in the future that will make a positive influence on your position. For example, visualize yourself losing the weight that you always wanted too and working a job that you love. This will help give you a direction to start working towards and change the pain from being a roadblock and into being fuel behind you to get to where you want to be.
“Visualize where you want to be, and you will find yourself there in no time.”
2. Stay focused, stay strong.
Like anything, focus tends to come and go. We’re not built to just switch our lives around and our patterns within a moments notice and never struggle. The struggle is where we learn about ourselves. This teaches us that we are not only stronger than we imagined, but have the ability to create our own futures; giving us a feeling of ownership and power over how we control ourselves.
When life hits you and you know you need to make changes, remain focused. When that focus starts to slip, take a step back and think about your new direction and figure out if you’re still on the right path to achieving that landing zone.
“Where focus goes, energy flows.”
3. Be a damn warrior.
Change is scary but staying where you are should scare you far more. As you navigate your new path, be a damn warrior about it. You will fall, you will stumble, but always fight to get back up and stay on your path. Every significant change in our life scares us to our core because EVERYTHING is new about it. We not only have new experiences, but we must face new decisions we have never encountered and learn how to best handle everything.
You will encounter stressors and resistance to your new path, that is for sure, but your fight must always be greater. It is important to understand that you must keep picking yourself up if you genuinely want to reach that goal you’ve set for yourself.
“Sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage.”
