GOT PAIN? I’ll share mine with you… Think back to a painful time in your life. Regardless of the type of pain, physical or emotional or both, the fact that you are reading this now means that you lived through it, and that pain you experienced was a defining moment in your life. It helped to shape who you are today. Pain is a GOOD THING! It is only through pain that you grow, develop, build character, and improve who you are as a person. It’s sometimes very hard to put this light on the painful experience you are having or did have, but this is the TRUTH. So, when you are experiencing pain, you have two choices: the first is to stick it out, push through, embrace the pain and use it as power to fuel your growth. You have to have faith that you will make it through this painful time. The second choice you have is to give in, give up, and shut down. Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t embrace the feelings of anxiety, depression, stress, frustration, anger, etc, during this painful time. Listening to those emotions is what helps you realize what changes need to be made in order to feel better. And if you ignore those emotions they do not go away, but only get louder and louder until you are forced to LISTEN to them. I will give you an example in my own life of a defining moment through one of the most emotionally painful experiences I’ve ever had: divorce. First of all, I’m extremely thankful now for the amount of pain I was in during this period for if it wasn’t for the magnitude of pain, I would not have come to the realization of what NEEDED to happen for me to be truly happy. I will also spare you a lot of the details because if I don’t then this will turn into 300 pages, easily. Second, I’m writing this because I am completely open and honest with you as I don’t view myself as on a higher level than others, but on the exact same level, going through some of the exact same struggles. I spend a lot of time journaling and reflecting/studying the depths to which different experiences in life affect us, so if this helps even just one person, then writing this is entirely worth it. Okay, so I’ll try to keep this short and to the point. Way before I met Ame, I was married for four years to someone that I met in college. I was convinced that no matter what, as long as we loved each other and we were joined in the bond of marriage that nothing could break us. I was wrong. It was rocky to put it extremely lightly. Through much pain during the marriage there eventually was a distinct moment where divorce was the only option. Let me tell you, my world came apart quickly. I can honestly say that because of what happened in my marriage, and what I found out about the other person (cheating, lies, personal attacks, backstabbing, etc) this was THE most emotionally painful experience to date. I can remember exactly how I felt at the time. Sitting in my (previously our) now empty apartment, staring at wedding pictures hanging on the wall, surrounded by memories, with a feeling of hollowness and complete emptiness for the world I thought I knew didn’t exist anymore. It didn’t stop there, in addition to the extreme emotional pain there was a slew of other pains that resulted and piggybacked onto it. Now that I abruptly had only one income, I couldn’t afford a bed (and I was without a bed for 1.5 years, sleeping on the couch, and an air mattress), credit card debt was high, I had a BMW that with two incomes was affordable but now with one was completely unaffordable, not to mention high rent in the Bellevue/Seattle area. I couldn’t even afford food. I remember my mother coming to visit from Bend, OR and looking through the cupboards to find something to eat—there was nothing (luckily she took me to Costco and we loaded up. I am forever thankful to her for that day because the food she bought lasted me an entire month). I was having trouble even feeding my dog because I couldn’t afford dog food so I would boil up a bunch of rice (it was cheap) and then toss in a couple freezer-burned chicken breasts that I had left from months back. I would eat a little bit of rice and chicken then I would put what I could in his bowl and we would eat together. So here I am, completely broke, a lot of debt, too many expenses, on the verge of starving, and on top of it all still trying to make sense of all this emotional pain from the divorce. This is what you call hitting “rock bottom.” One morning I woke up and sat there for a second on some old couch cushions I had spread out onto the floor as a makeshift bed. I remember looking around me, at all the emptiness. Then asking myself some questions: “Is this how you want to live? Are you going to give up? Do you ever want to go through this again? You are still alive and breathing, so what are you going to do about this?!” I started to get fired up, angry almost. I was at the beginning stages of using all this pain, stress, and anxiety as fuel to push forward and blaze a new path to a new chapter in my life. I came to a lot of realizations over the next few months as I started to kick ass at work again, earning more money so I could eat and pay the bills. I started embracing my pain because I knew it wasn’t going away and I needed to listen to it, needed to hurt, cry, get mad, and FEEL the emotions because if I pushed them away they would only get worse and bring me back down. I learned a lot about myself through this process. I gained a lot of faith in myself, in God, and built up my confidence. I learned that nobody else but me could push through this and come out on top—nobody was coming to rescue me—it was UP TO ME to make a change. Even writing this now, reliving some of those emotions I tear up a little. But now, the tears are of joy because without going through this extreme PAIN I would’ve have never learned what I truly needed to be happy; and that’s when I met the person whom I truly needed: Ame. Because I had gone through this experience I knew exactly the type of person that I wanted to be with. Rather than shut down and say, “my marriage failed so I’m never getting married again because it might hurt again,” I used the pain to shed light on finding happiness again. Ame and I developed a deep connection before we even went on our first date; this was important to both of us as we’d both been hurt before. We were completely honest and uninhibited, firing questions at eachother over the phone. Everything from how we felt about kids, if we liked coffee, how we grew up, what values did we each possess, and the list goes on but the point is that without going through all of this pain I would have never known what I truly needed, what I needed to change in myself and what I needed in someone else. And, because of all of this, we became debt free, built a large savings, developed and built each other up, started a family, started a business, among so many other things. So what’s the big take away from all of this? Whatever pain you are going through, NO MATTER HOW SMALL OR HOW BIG, allow it shape you. It will provide a catalyst for your personal growth that nothing else can come close to. We NEED pain because without it we stay in our comfort zone which takes us nowhere. Take a moment to look back on a painful experience and see where it took you. And if you’re going through pain right now, LISTEN to what your emotions are telling you. What are you going to do? What do you need to change to overcome this? If you can view pain in this way, you have truly found POWER! --Jason
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 14:00:00 +0000
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