Remember in The Lion King when Rafiki bopped Simba on top of his head with his staff to teach him about the past? Simba asked "Why did he did he do that?" Rafiki told him, "What does it matter? It's in the past." Simba said, "Yeah, but it still hurts." To which Rafiki said....
"The past can hurt, but you can either run from it, or learn from it. Change is good, and everybody is somebody, even a nobody"
Part of our growth process is to turn pain into purpose. Every trial we face is an opportunity to level up. Failure is not when something doesn't go in your favor. Failure is when you give up.
When something jacked up happens in our lives, it is a lesson to teach us something. We are not trying to hear that in the moment, obviously. Our feelings about the situation are too strong. I think this is the missing component that people leave about in regards to giving advice on how to learn from mistakes or find purpose in pain.
YES, it DOES suck. VERY MUCH SO when something bad happens to us. We MUST acknowledge that and our feelings accordingly.
We are not robots or drones where we can just flick a switch to control our emotions. It is unhealthy and unwise to hold in your emotions, or to dismiss them.
There are ways to deal with strong emotions without causing physical or emotional harm to yourself or others.
Some form of athletic activity like running, biking, swimming, weight-lifting, martial-arts, etc. If you are like me and find it hard to exercise because of chronic pain, this is a good time to burn that energy and calories while you're at it.
Going into a sound-proof room (if you have one) and shouting the lights out. Writing EXACTLY how you feel in the moment in a journal.
Drawing a picture that represents how you feel. (This doesn't just work for kids. It works for adults too.)
Intentionally focusing on something that you know will bring you instant joy, or looking or listening to some content that makes you INSTANTLY laugh until your stomach hurts as soon as you see it.
Even crying can be very therapeutic or cathartic. You just have to release that pressure in a way that allows things to come back into focus. Sometimes (but not all the time) this alone can allow us to see that what we were so upset about really wasn't all that serious.
Once we disperse that energy, we can calm down, re-access the situation to examine just exactly what happened here, see what we can learn from it, and then plan a strategy to how to deal with the situation so that it's never an issue again in our lives and we can help others not to ever have to deal with it to begin with.
Comments