Because we are hardwired to avoid pain, we often overlook opportunities to change the way we think about the things that hurt us. These three insights are designed to painlessly empower you to reframe your pain and reclaim the potential trapped within.
1. If you avoid pain like a bad neighborhood, you’ll also avoid all the hidden gems it contains.
What if that bad neighborhood has some of the best authentic food in the city? You’d probably still avoid going there because no meal is worth getting your car stolen. But you don’t have to go into your pain to get something good from it, you just have to be open to something good coming out of it. Maybe that restaurant delivers. Maybe they cater outside events. If you never look at what the bad neighborhoods of your inner landscape have to offer, you’ll never form a desire to let that good stuff into your life and it’ll be forever frozen in potential purgatory.
Reframe Your Pain: Don’t buy into the bad. Just as some things are too good to be true, most of our fear around pain is too bad to be real. Yes slamming your fingers in a car door will hurt, but that shouldn’t stop you from ever getting in a car again. Pain is not a bad thing. It’s an indicator that there’s a more harmonious way to do what you’re doing that’s meant to stop you in your tracks until you discover how to move forward without hurting yourself.
2. The more you avoid being hurt, the more you force yourself to play safe.
So long as we have the ability to control our circumstances, we have the ability to keep pain at a distance. But the more we play it safe, the more limited we become. By exercising our control to avoid getting hurt, we also avoid taking risks and avoid paths that lead to uncertainty. This reinforces the status quo and prevents us from learning what we’re truly capable of. Sometimes the very things that scare us, are the experiences that will show us we had nothing to fear all along.
Reframe Your Pain: What if pain wasn’t an indicator to exercise further control, but an invitation to open yourself up to easier options? Life doesn’t have to be hard. Pain is here to keep us from putting up with more than we bargained for.
3. The more you avoid hurting others, the more you force yourself to play small.
If you are afraid to hurt others, you will naturally play down to the level of those around you. The better you do in life, the worse others will feel about their life in comparison; so you’ll minimize your accomplishments and avoid sharing or follow through on big ambitions. The more love you share with someone, the more hurt they’ll feel if the relationship one day ends; so you’ll be reluctant to love to your fullest unless you’re sure things will work out.
Reframe Your Pain: In the long run, you don’t hurt people by inspiring them to become more. You hurt them by making it normal to settle for being less. Trading short-term pain for long-term gain is a recipe for enriching your future. Trading short-term gain for long-term pain is a recipe for feeling like your problems are always bigger than you are.
Picture credits:
Rolands Zilvinskis: The Frame
Grace Madeline: The Picture Inside It