Welcome to Personal Development for Men Issue #55

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Pain

and what it means to you

Your feet hurt. You need new shoes.

Your teeth hurt. You need to go to the dentist.

You feel tired. You need more sleep.

You feel bloated. You need to eat less for a few days and go for a walk.

You feel depressed. You need to find something fun to do.

You feel broke. You need to avoid spending money.

You feel lost. You need to ask for directions.

You have a headache. You need to take some aspirin and close your eyes for awhile.

Your back is sore. You need to take it easy for a few days and do some light stretching and slow walking.

If you notice carefully, whatever is causing you pain is normally caused by your own actions. Knowing this, you can avoid the pain. There isn't a really good reason to experience excessive pain for the self aware person.

I am in the process of becoming self aware, so I am still experiencing my share of pain. But I am learning to recognize what I have done to cause the pain.

It's hard because some of the things I've done to cause my pain now I did years ago. It is literally years in the making.

I stayed married to my wife years after I thought I should leave.

I have been overeating for years and have weighed too much for a long time.

My finances became out of control due to my bad marriage.

My right shoulder aches from continual overuse.

Since you did it years ago, you will have a tendency to think that it is someone else who caused your problem.

But looking back you will see that it was your decisions that made it so.

My inability to work through the issues I had with my wife early in our marriage escalated until I had to leave. I didn't deal with things early on. I also could have left my earlier and gotten my life together much earlier.

This way of thinking is very empowering but also frustrating. When you have pain, you know you should be doing something, but sometimes you are paralyzed because what you need to do you cannot do right now.

Of course, other people have the same opportunities so there will naturally be opposition and turmoil.

The main idea is to get to know yourself enough and examine your life in enough detail to see what you did that is causing you pain. It is probably not your fault but it is your responsibility.

It was not my fault that felt that I had to continually overeat for whatever reasons. But I did do the overeating and now I weigh too much. I am taking responsibility for it.

It is not my fault I felt I always had to lift so much and work so hard to cause my aching shoulders. But I am the one who did that to myself and I take the responsibility for it.

It was not my fault that my wife verbally abused me so much that I left her. But I take responsibility for getting involved with her in the first place and then not being aware of the problem enough when it first started to do anything about it.

So I am here now. Overweight but working on it and starting to feel and look better.

Weak and sore shoulders but doing light exercises and stretching to feel better and stronger.

Divorced and loving the freedom to live my life almost exactly as I want to.

I used my pain as a guide to what I need to do in my life to make it better.

If you examine this more closely you will see that the role of pain is to point you toward what you need to do. Pain is not something you need to learn to tolerate or deal with or take or anything stupid like that. Pain is a guide to tell you that you have a big problem that needs your attention and you have to stop doing whatever is causing the pain and do something much different and better for you.

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