Pain either really sucks or it really sucks and you see it as a chance to improve and learn something.
Both options, not so fun. But the first keeps you focused on your pain, and the other focuses you on finding solutions to solve it.
When I first injured my neck, all I saw was pain. The excruciating tension and ache was one thing, but there was also the pain of loss and despair, of what I couldn’t do or be because of it. By mentally focusing on only your pain in a discouraging way, you are amplifying its power over you. Hell is a place of hopeless pain. It’s the feeling that things will never be the same (which is true) and that your life is over (which is not true).
Life as you know it is over, but your new life has begun. The nice thing about pain is that it gives you a chance for a Renaissance. A rebirth of who you are. The opportunity to reinvent and challenge who you were, and find a better possible future for yourself and your story. Whether or not you take on the challenge or let the pain rule you, is your choice. It took me a while to understand this. I didn’t make the choice when I first injured myself. All I did was focus on the pain and think ‘why!? Why me?’ to myself. Pain masks your ability to see the other options and choices you have in from of you.
And it’s not just one decision. Victory doesn’t happen automatically. It’s a decision you have to decide to make every day.
You’ve got two choices:
1. Live how you are living — in some sort of twilight zone / black mirror land where you are suck in your pain won’t seem to go away no matter how much you wish it would. Keep your head down. Resign to your fate.
Or —
2. Decide to do something about it.
Which isn’t about healing yourself; It’s about deciding to heal yourself. Doing something about it is a vow to yourself to try to find a resolution. A choice to find a better you. A lesson that gives you the opportunity to change and prove to yourself that you can.
Stay BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
And wherever you are on your journey, keep smiling 🙂
— Josh Waggoner
