Turning Pain to Passion & Purpose

Let's talk about turning pain into passion and purpose!

This is one of my most favorite topics.  This idea can single-handedly change your life.  It certainly has changed mine!  

Our pain offers us an incredible opportunity to evolve and grow beyond where we are right now.  Our collective experience of stress and pain right now is a unique opportunity in the history of us as a species to use stress as a powerful source for evolution and growth.  

So often we try to bypass it, we avoid it, resist it, suppress or repress it and deny it's even happening at all.  Yet, what's the result of this approach?  Nothing good and often loads of suffering occur as a result.

From a biological, political, and social structural standpoint, stress (and pain) have always been the greatest drivers of evolution, change and growth.   We need to reconnect to this truth of Nature and then apply it to our own lives.  We often times can become so accustomed to stress that we start only seeing through the neural circuitry that aligns with stress. And pretty soon all we see as more and more stress, more and more pain. And then we shut down, right? Because we are a biological organism and all biological organisms are designed to avoid pain and to ensure survival.

Pain and stress are part of an intelligent feedback system that is here to serve us with valuable information.  But it's up to us to know how to use it as such.  We spend a lot of time avoiding or minimizing pain rather than looking squarely at it, and this makes us suffer even more than the pain itself does.

I think of it as an equation (it's the science nerd in me): Pain X Resistance to Pain = Suffering

Life is painful. There's no getting around this. When we turn towards pain, to see it clearly and compassionately, It's truly an opportunity to reduce our overall suffering in life. And it's taken me a long time to truly understand that the amount of pain that I experienced is nothing compared to the resistance I have around that pain, you know? 

Resisting pain is especially prominent in those with strong willpower and grit, and it works against us.  For the longest time, I didn't want to acknowledge I was burning out. I didn't want to feel my emotions at all, so I did everything to avoid them and I suffered mightily.  

I discuss how painful feelings and emotions can be the gateway for us to fuel our passion and purpose in life.

This is alchemy, in a way.  The ability to turn pain into passion and purpose is possible for each one of us and it will require we open to the nature of pain and begin to understand the exquisitely intelligent feedback system that lives within us. 

Listen on to find out more!

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