Every Pain Is An Opportunity

So you're going through a tough time in your life? It feels like your world is totally falling apart around you. You've lost your job, or you're experiencing some massive financial hardship, or you're marriage/relationship has just ended, or your house burnt down, or a loved one has just passed away, or anything to these levels of complete devastation, disbelief, and sadness. You are feeling at your lowest of lows, and you really need strong support and love around you. Feeling the way you do, the last thing you would really want to hear from anyone is for them to tell you to stay strong, because every pain is an opportunity, and every pain is a gift. How could the passing of a loved one be a gift? How could losing your job be a gift? How could your house being burned down be an opportunity? How could being financially crippled be an opportunity? Times of adversity are unpleasant, there's no sugar coating that! When things are going against us, it's incredibly difficult to try and remain positive, even more so, to be seeking out opportunities. As strange as it may be though, life does indeed present opportunities to us, during times of adversity and suffering. We may not see it at the time, but often, we can end up being led to a place of happiness, success, and satisfaction. That pain and suffering that we endure can end up becoming our superpower. I think it's when we are on the other side of such pain and suffering, we slowly begin to see the courage, resilience, and strength we actually applied to get through such a tough time. It's an achievement in itself, and something we should be proud of, because pain, suffering, and adversity can be incredibly demoralizing and damaging to our mental state. For some people, such times can become so overwhelming, that they fail to overcome it, either wasting away in misery, or sadly, even taking their own lives.

Have you ever experienced a time of adversity, suffering, or hardship in the past, which you look back on now and are actually glad you went through that, because it ended up steering you in a much better direction? Not only that, but you feel so much stronger and wiser for the experience? It's a key word "experience". Experience is how we learn in life. Without experience, we base our knowledge on what we hear, what we read, or what others tell us. We don't actually know for ourselves. Experience isn't all about fun, games, and adventure though. It can often be life's way of, not only providing us with learning, but also wisdom and maturity. You see, with pain, suffering, adversity, and failure, we basically have two choices; we can sit around feeling sorry for ourselves, beg for sympathy and compassion, and wallow in misery, or we can be proactive in working towards navigating our way through these hard times. For most of us, we take the first option initially, before we finally develop the willpower and strength to start working on getting past it, and therefore move on with our life, in the pursuit of happiness, success, and fulfillment again. It's this "working to get past it" stage that becomes such a pivotal period in our life, and the reason being is that we are forced out of our comfort zone, we are forced into taking action, we are forced to perhaps make changes, and we are forced into doing things that we normally wouldn't do. That's when our true character and potential is often revealed. For most people, their talent, potential, true character, and abilities are hidden within them, lying dormant because these individuals won't step out of their comfort zone to do something different. When facing adversity, hardship, suffering, and the like, the only way we can overcome it is to tackle it head on. When we face these times, we gain experience, albeit not good experience, but it's still a learning curve, and it's learning that then leads to growth. We grow as an individual because we begin revealing the true potential within us through how we handle and overcome such difficult times. Growth comes from strength and courage!

Having been through the hardest time in my entire life, at the start of the year, and still far from being out of the woods away from the challenges I have had to face, I have fast started looking at the opportunities I have from this time of adversity, instead of dwelling on the negativity of my circumstances. Engaging in personal development, over the past four years, has really helped me better deal with emotion and mindset. Although I have experienced those natural and expected emotions any human would experience in such circumstances, the work I have put into strengthening my mindset has really helped me to better see past the adversity, and readjusted my focus back on to the opportunities I have moving forward, even despite them looking different to how I envisioned things a year ago. I mentioned above that "experience" is a key word, well so is "mindset". Mindset is what ultimately depicts our emotions, our reaction, our response, our attitude, our behavior, and our character. The thing is, mindset isn't just something that we can simply place our hope in, anticipating it will be there to get us through the tough times, because it's us in control of it. We determine the choices we make, and the decisions we take, from the mindset we are in. If we are wallowing in sorrow, feeling sorry for ourselves, and playing the victim of our own circumstances, naturally our mind is in negative mode. How do we expect to achieve positive results from a place of negativity? We can still grieve, be upset, feel disappointed, and so on, we wouldn't be human if we didn't, but it's about pushing past these emotions and then centering our focus back onto something that will uplift and motivate us once again. We need to change our thought pattern. Where is this adversity leading me? What decisions is this adversity prompting me to make? What actions is this adversity encouraging me to take? How can I create something positive out of something negative? What can I control, rather than what can't I control? What changes do I need to make?

None of us are exempt from adversity! We all experience it in different ways, but we are all born with the characteristics of courage, perseverance, determination, and resilience also. No matter the adversity we are confronted with, we are equipped with these characteristics to help us to deal with these challenges and trials, and to overcome them. We just need to centre our attention on what positives we can create for ourselves moving forward. There are always opportunities right in front of us, no matter our circumstances, we just need to seek them out and grab them! As much as it hurts, as much as it's mentally exhausting, and as much as the suffering sucks big time, every pain is an opportunity. That pain may just end up becoming the best thing that could've ever happened to you.

#Saturday #SaturdayMotivation #motivation #quote #pain #adversity #suffering #trials #hurt #opportunity #mindset #focus #positive #strength #courage #experience #learning #growth #development #perseverance #resilience #determination #character #emotions #overcome #willpower #WindOfChangeNow