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Hey! In Life do you ‘………….’ or ‘………….’ pain ?

I want to recall a very interesting story that I happened to read

The old Master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it. “How does it taste?” the Master asked. “Awful,” spat the apprentice. The Master chuckled and then asked the young man to take another handful of salt and put it in the lake.

The two walked in silence to the nearby lake and when the apprentice swirled his handful of salt into the lake, the old man said, “Now drink from the lake.” As the water dripped down the young man’s chin, the Master asked, “How does it taste?” “Good!” remarked the apprentice. “Do you taste the salt?” asked the Master. “No,” said the young man.

The Master sat beside this troubled young man, took his hands, and said, “The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount we taste the ‘pain’ depends on the container we put it into. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things….. Stop being a glass. Become a lake!”

I am not here talking about the Physical Pain but the mental pain and agony that we go through in our lives. Physical pain is of no choice and we can over come with various pain killers. But where is the ‘pain killer‘ for your mind? Unfortunatly pharmacies do not sell them. They might think that you are crazy and asking for a pain killer.

How do you come out of the pain of life? What creates the pain? Events, Situations, people, incidents? Do these create pain? But how?

Before your proceed reading I want you to list down the top reasons why you experience pain. Please do this as this is very important for you to move on this post

I hope you are reading this after listing down the pain you are going through. Again reiterating its not physical pain, we are talking about mental pain, the feeling of pain. Now check the reasons what you have cited fall under these broad categories

1. People
2. Events
3. Environment and things not happening the way you want it to?

Can you tell me how do people create pain. Most of the times we assume that they have an intention of creating pain and hence we bear that pain and not able to talk to the concerned person. Let me ask you this, are there people who truly mean to hurt you and make you feel bad? Does your wife, brother, father/mother, boss or whoever be it have an intention of creating pain for you? Incidentally these are people who really are bothered about you. If that’s true how can they create pain? So where does the pain exist and where does the pain arise from?

Events create pain? How can events create pain? We choose the events and most importantly the events have already happened and without control, and how do they impose the pain in you?

And thirdly is things don’t happen the way you want to take responsibility and change the way you are doing things rather than feeling the pain and not moving forward in life.

The kind of pain what we undergo every day in life is nothing compared to what many people face in their life. I am not saying that your pain is nothing and it cannot impact you but there are people who change the way they look at things. That’s the point I want to drive in here.

Have you heard of this person by name Oscar Pistorius? He is the fastest man with no legs. Wondering how? He is a blade runner and has artificial limbs to run. He participated in several races including the race for able bodied. And guess what happened? The federations of athletics ruled him out from participating in races because he was using an external device to make him run better.

Oscar Pistorius was amputated on both the legs when he was 11 years old and at the age of 18, was introduced to running and never looked back and started practicing and decided to participate in the Olympics too. However he was not allowed to do so. Looks like the federation felt that he had a greater advantage. Truly yes he had a greater advantage, the advantage of having the “MINDSET” to look at the brighter side of life and not let go the pain take over him. The fact is that he was not even control of what happened to him. He could not do anything about his amputation as he was born with some deficiencies. Its about how he reacted to the pain he was having. Incidentally later the Athletics federation accepted him to participate in the Olympics.

How to come out of pain?

All said and done we still face the pain for sometime because we are not driven by logic, but by emotion. How do we approach it and how do we make sure that we do not allow the pain to affect us? Few simple ways to achieve this

    1.Behind every action is a Positive Intention or no Intention:

      When people do an act that might hurt you (or in fact for which you choose to get hurt) most of the times there is no intention. They do things without their knowledge and without realizing that they are doing it. They do not understand the consequence behind what they say or do and hence you feel hurt. So whenever someone hurts you, look whether they are doing it with an intention? If you know its not true then it won’t really hurt you.

An act is always preceded with a positive intention. “I want to feel important”, “I think I am better” and so many such thoughts go into the mind of a person before they utter something. Look at the highest positive intention behind why a person acted in a certain way. The moment you look at the positive intention, you feelings of being hurt will definitely reduce. Look at why the person wanted that positive intention and as they are lacking you are the only person who could give them the importance they need. So feel proud about it

2. Events can’t really control your feelings. I would like to recall this amazing formula by Jack Canfield (Co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul series),

Event + Response = Outcome

Most of the times we are not in control of the events, because the events have already happened and we cannot stop them now. But we definitely have the choice of responding the way we want to, to make the event not affect us. The law of polarity says “for anything that is negative there is always something positive” and if you were to look at the that, the event will not affect you.

Start choosing the response which favorable for you, which motivates you. If you lost money in the business, say good that happened and attach a meaning to it which best suits you and puts you in an empowered state.

We cannot control the events but can control the way we feel and respond to the event.

Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you respond to it

3. Disassociationis the key to not feeling the pain. When you feel the step out of yourself and start to think why the pain. Then the pain will sound so different that you will not feel it with the same intensity. You will start wondering why do feel for such a tiny challenge that you face. This is the immediate cure to the pain. Do that in an instant.

4. Words! The words you use make a difference. Stop using words such as “It so painful”, “I feel so hurt” (when you say this, just say to yourself immediately, ‘ok now stop feeling hurt’) and those disempowering words. This will only led you down even more.

When you feel the pain, you ask “Why me” and you feel unlucky and life seems to be unfair. But you fail to look at life in a larger perspective because life has also given you so many things. Whenever something good and interesting happened in life, you readily accepted and never asked “why me” during that time. So its not that life is sometimes painful, it’s just that we feel that way sometime. We are so gifted to get many things of life. We must learn to appreciate those nice things that we have and stop feeling about things that give us pain. Move on removing the pain in your life!

“The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t, life controls you.” – Anthony Robbins

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