During these stressful times I like to give you as many opportunities and tools as possible, to alleviate your own stress and suffering.
I recently finished my third book (it’s not published yet, stay tuned), and I just got the “download” for my fourth book. I’m beyond excited to gestate and birth this next baby!
I wanted to create a short blog that will begin to dive into the topic of my next book: Pain.
And how to find your medicine within the pain. Yes, that’s correct, you can actually use the experience of pain to treat pain itself. It’s an interesting paradox and I’ll share a few of my tools here.
When I speak about stress and pain, I’m referring to physical pain in your body, emotional pain (which can also meld into the category of psychological pain), psychological pain like anger/depression/anxiety/fear/grief, and spiritual pain.
It’s most common to push pain away and to move toward pleasure. It’s likely you’ve sought comfort during these interesting times of being in lock down in your home and city. Did you eat a bit more ice cream, drink an extra glass of wine nightly, consume more chocolate, veg out on Netflix, or smoke more cigarettes? It’s not bad to look for comfort and simultaneously, I believe it’s important to approach it with much more awareness than we usually do. This way it can start to become its own medicine.
Old habits can feel difficult to break, but this is really just part of your mind playing tricks on you. We create deep neural grooves in our brain and then we live on a kind of “autopilot”. This keeps us locked into a prison in our mind. We aren’t free if we are running off of old programs. The worst part is that most of this is coming from our unconscious and we aren’t even aware. However, it’s easier than you may think to break free of these patterns and create new and healthy habits, heightening your awareness, experiencing incredible freedom and joy in your life.
Your old way of being isn’t going to do anything differently, nor is it going to find the solution through the same behaviors and thought processes.
Albert Einstein said “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” This goes for strategies of soothing pain as well , which have likely developed into habits and have become part of your personality.
You may be asking “What are my options?”
I’m going to outline a few basic steps below but first we have a bit more mind exploration to do.
Not only do most people try to push away pain and sooth it with external quick fixes, they also seem to have limited capacity and resilience for change and growth. Don’t worry, there is plenty I’m going to share with you to help, you’re not as stuck as you may feel. Increasing this capacity is similar to lifting weights. At first you can’t pick up the really big weights, they are simply too heavy, so you begin with the smaller weights and little by little, your strength increases. You likely have underdeveloped muscles around awareness practices and true change.
It’s even possible that you’ve exercised your muscles to deal with pain and stress so much that this can feel more familiar so you continue to subconsciously create situations and stressors that affirm this aspect of your identity. This is not to blame or shame you at all for the pain you may feel or your circumstances, rather it’s time to begin to heighten your awareness so you can discover what is really blocking you, and then release that hook, and start fresh.
It can feel like learning a new language or a new instrument, which is difficult, only because your mind is used to things seeming “easy”. It’s simply your mind judging that something should be a certain way and not another way. When we stretch our mind, we are creating new neural networks in our brain. I’m learning guitar, again. I say again because I’ve “begun” 3 different times and then I stop short of getting anywhere even close to playing. I get frustrated with how slow I’m progressing, I judge myself, I compare myself to accomplished musicians who have spent decades playing and learning. How silly of me.
What if I told you that it’s actually important to struggle a little on this path and that this shows you are actually utilizing new muscles and developing new capacities. Well, it’s true, and this means there is soooo much hope for humanity!
Here’s What You Need to Get Started:
- Courage: To learn something new and see parts of yourself that are both dark (and some may judge as ugly), as well as the light and brilliant parts of your being (which can be equally difficult to accept). It can take courage to step into the arena of self-awareness and self-development.
- Commitment: To yourself, to stepping into and living from your highest and most authentic self. To discover and share your passions and gifts with the world, and to live from a place of love, compassion, forgiveness, peace, and joy. To do your best, all the time, and then discover how you could have done it even better. (It’s important to do this without judgment, beating yourself up, defeats the purpose!). To never give up, even when you feel as if you’re hanging by a string. This is the time to reach out for guidance and support.
- Compassion: For yourself and others. When people act in ways that feel or appear hurtful, don’t strike out. They are struggling with their own darkness and light, confusion, and pain. Learning to hold yourself and others in the light of compassion can model deep peace for those around you, including the person who did or said whatever felt yucky to you. This is also important with regards to politics and other global issues. Yes, there is corruption, yes people are driven by money and power, but this doesn’t mean we stoop to their lower vibration. It’s not as simple as “not stooping to their level”, there is more to it than that. This is a very simplified version. We need critical thinkers as well as compassionate hearts. We need people who will take action and people who are visionaries. Compassion does not mean being complacent. Compassion can inform our actions.
Next you will begin to develop Discernment: We need to discern when, where, and if we take action, how we take action, and with whom. We can begin to develop the discernment muscle through practice. It all takes some practice.
Living your best life and shifting out of old patterns of thinking and being takes practice so please be patient with yourself. Sometimes it will feel easy and other times you’ll label it as slow. Just drop the labels and stay on the path.