One Powerful Change Makes All The Difference
Running away from your emotions, pain, and problems is not the solution. Everything bad that happens is a learning opportunity. It’s what you need, even if it’s not fun.
I was again shocked to meet people drinking, complaining, and doing drugs all weekend long, thinking this was the answer to their life’s problems.
Since when does running away from your shit help?
Don’t get me wrong, I somewhat enjoyed their company, though we had nothing in common, but I was astounded at their inability to grasp this simple concept: running away from your problems, emotions, and thoughts doesn’t solve anything. It just makes things worse.
By extension, this includes drinking, smoking, doing drugs, and other mind-numbing activities that admittedly do give you some much-needed relief but don’t last, lead you down a dark path, and, most importantly, aren’t fixing anything!
Throughout my life, I’ve learned that I need to stay with the pain, emotional or physical, to get that message and process the information it is providing.
I’m not saying I have everything figured out
I don’t! But I do have 90% of my life, body, and mind in order. I can confidently say I feel great most of the time and am happy and content most of my waking hours. If you can say the same — congratulations, my friend! You and I must be doing something right. Because if you think this is the “norm,” you are sorely mistaken. I wish it were, though.
These lovely people couldn’t understand how I could have my shit so well together and why I didn’t need the escape they so desperately craved, or why my thoughts were so clear and objective on most emotionally triggering issues that were consuming them.
It was awkward and a bit flattering, but I mostly felt sorry for them. Their path is one of destruction and future suffering. If they don’t keep things in check, all of their problems will only get worse, not better.
Please understand that I am just as flawed as the next guy, probably more so
I’ve made a ton of mistakes and have been through so much emotional suffering that you probably wouldn’t believe it. That’s sort of the point. The permanent salvation from my problems (mental, health, relationship, and otherwise) came as a direct result of having to endure that suffering in the first place.
Even a muscle doesn’t grow unless under tension, and neither do we.
- So, why the difference?
- Why don’t I need or even frankly want to drink, smoke, or do drugs?
- Why don’t I constantly complain and seek one escape after another?
A practical illustration of my process using a recent example
I’ve just come back from a few weeks-long vacation. On the second day of my first destination (of many planned), I hurt my back while swimming. Yes, swimming, like a freaking grandpa. I instantly became an immovable statue in a lot of pain.
Since our vacations aren’t lying on the beach but are more akin to active adventures, I was in a bit of a predicament. Not to mention that my family will have to share my fate on this particular trip, whether they like it or not.
Everyone I talked to had only one solution for me — go to the pharmacy and take painkillers. Don’t be so stubborn. There is no reason for you to suffer, they said.
I beg to disagree — suffering is there for a reason!
Pain and suffering teach us that we are doing something wrong and point us in the right direction — if we listen. We can’t do this if we numb it down or pretend it isn’t happening.
I tried figuring out what exactly hurt and why this came to be
I sought to solve the problem at the source, not simply make enduring the symptoms easier. Since I could hardly do anything but rest, I used that time in the following manner:
- I accepted that I made a mistake and that I was where I was. The original plans are no longer viable, as I can’t even walk more than a few feet without fainting from pain. I have no choice but to rest. Fuck it — it is what it is!
- I didn’t want to take any painkillers because I wanted to feel the pain. Not because I’m a freaking masochist and enjoy the sensation of pain (I most certainly do not!), but because I was now on a mission. I needed to find out why this happened and how to prevent it from happening again. Throughout my life, I’ve learned that I need to stay with the pain, emotional or physical, to get that message and process the information it is providing.
- I wanted to learn all I could and then experiment until I figured it out and found relief. I can’t do that if I can’t feel what and where it hurts. Nor would I know when I can do more exercises or walk about, as I don’t want to rush a fresh injury (speaking from experience).
- I did the research. In a few days of resting and learning, I have figured it out. I found exercises that helped relieve my pain, and I began the journey of correcting the flaws in my posture while strengthening the weaknesses that caused the issue in the first place. I now know how to strengthen and fix my body’s problems and avoid repeating the injury in the future.
I am better for the experience because I chose not to run away from it but to learn all I could while accepting that things were as they were.
I’m nothing if not lazy. I’ve just learned the hard way where that path leads — to more work, pain, and suffering, not less.
My lazy attitude now helps me deal with problems head-on because I know that this is the only “shortcut” there is.
I have also used this time to learn a lot about the mental side of things and refocus my efforts on the core issue of my mind. The two are always connected, and if you don’t listen to your mind’s warnings, your body will make you stop and listen!
My advice for all problems in your life is the following:
- Never try to escape the pain or the problem or numb it. That doesn’t work. You will have to deal with the problem or the much worse aftermath of ignoring it sooner or later. Choose the lesser pain now, rather than having to endure a much worse pain later!
- We all make mistakes, and bad things “happen to us all.” We can feel like victims and blame everyone and everything for our problems, or we can assume responsibility for our lives. The first will keep you in an eternal hellfire of perpetual victimhood. The second will help you get through that fire and walk out the other end smarter, better, and stronger for the experience.
- All problems, situations, and failures can be seen as personal failures, misfortune, and terrible coincidences, or they can be reframed into something positive — a learning opportunity. Every pain is trying to teach you something. Every mistake you make can make you smarter and better. Every fall will teach you how to better walk through life. If you take it as a lesson and learn from it.
No pain, no gain is a saying for a reason, and it doesn’t apply only to physical activity.
We can’t grow and learn without breaking some things, falling, failing, and learning the things we don’t yet know.
When looking at other people, you only notice their wins and where they are now, but you don’t know what they went through to get there. In most cases, I’m betting their strength, resilience, competence, and knowledge grew as a result of a lot of pain, suffering, adaptation, and willingness to correct their path along the way.
Which reminds me — please be kind to strangers, for you don’t know what battles they’re fighting on the inside.
The shift from running away to facing your issues, from pretending the problems aren’t real to owning and learning from them, will change everything for you, and while you won’t see immediate effects today or tomorrow, they will accumulate into a life that the “alternative” version of you couldn’t even have dreamed of.
Once you understand and learn to view the problems in your life, mind, and body as messages and learning opportunities, you will be able to connect the dots where you previously saw nothing but coincidences and misfortune. Both don’t really exist, but you won’t believe it until you see the connections yourself.
Was the pain worth it?
In my example from above, simple though it may be, we can already see the potential for massive improvement down the line.
In the short term, I gathered the required information, and after trying out a few exercises (to get to the right ones) for relief and correction, I got much better in a matter of days—so much so that we could complete most of the planned activities. Of course, I still had to take it easy and make some adaptations. All in all, we had a great time.
In the long run, I would assume that if I put what I’ve learned into practice, I will have corrected this core issue of my posture that causes all sorts of instability, chronic pain, weakness, and injuries.
These things compound like crazy. Add decades to this story, and you can see just how important it was that I listened to the pain and dealt with it head-on.
If we assumed the extremes of this one simple issue, one would lead to an old man in a wheelchair and the other to a healthy, vital, and strong grandpa throwing around weights and, hopefully, grandkids in his eighties.
A few weeks of pain, followed by a few weeks of changing habits and adapting how I do things, should, by all accounts, bring about lasting change and, hopefully, never again having to deal with this particular issue.
If I had run away, numbing the pain, never learning what I needed to learn, the lesson would just keep repairing in my life over and over again.
We all have such repeating patterns in our lives
We need to understand what they are telling us before we can move past them. Once understood and adopted, they disappear from our lives as if they were never an issue in the first place.
I promise you that emotional and mental problems have even larger implications on the quality of your life. The leverage there is enormous. If you’re running away from your emotions and issues instead of facing them and learning, you will be heading toward an ever darker path.
On the other hand, if you discipline yourself to face your “demons,” problems, and failures, accept your situation, take responsibility, and deal with them productively, you’ve now chosen the path that leads towards the light.
No, it doesn’t feel easy or fun in the short run, but what it does is actually fix the damn problem in the first place and makes you more resilient, smarter, and stronger in the process. It may not feel good now, but it will make you feel great in the long run.
Imagine two parallel universes where, in one, you always face your fears, issues, and situations, learn from them, grow, and move on, and in another, you do the opposite.
Whenever you are met with a difficult situation, pain, or a problem, you cower and run away, numbing the pain of life, mind, and body in any way you can. The problems compound, and you are sinking lower and lower with each day. Extrapolate this in decades, and you will have two distinct and wildly different versions of “you.”
- Which one do you think is doing better in life?
- Which one is stronger and happier?
- Which one do you want to become?
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All the above articles and more are also available right here, on Medium, but they are only accessible to Medium members, so I included the FREE Substack links instead.
