If you can’t live with pain. If you can’t live with boredom. If you can’t live with failure and disappointment. If you can’t live with repetition and rejection.
Then you will not be ready to embrace the opposite.
You will not be ready to embrace life at all.
When a dream fades, there are two types of pain to deal with.
One comes from the loss of the dream itself.
One comes from the lack of space – energy, time, emotions, thoughts – needed for another dream to come replace the first one.
I find the second one more difficult to figure out and deal with.
There are a few things that are always good for your mind and body.
Exercising.
Meditating.
Eating healthy,
Cooking your own food.
Sleeping.
Taking regular breaks throughout the day.
Keeping a journal.
Yet, we always find excuses not to get to them. Time is important, even more important is what we do with it.
Some flames burn fast. They are powerful, fiery, exciting. And when they are gone, what’s left is pitch black.
Some flames burn slow. They are steady, warm, comforting. And when they are gone, what’s left is a halo.
You’ll experience both in your life. And it’s important to know what to expect in return.
One way to react to pain is to shut out what caused the pain.
If someone cheated you, why trust people again?
If a job has demotivated you, why commit to another job again?
If friends and family have abandoned you, why seek for human connection again?
The examples are somewhat trivial, but it is a pretty common and natural way to react to pain. We take our own experience, or our own repeated experiences, and we extend that to the full category – people, work, friends, family, love, connection, health – to protect ourselves from further pain.
The problem though is that when we do that we are never better off. We avoid pursuing something that matters to us in the name of safety and comfort. But pain is inevitable. It is part of us, it is part of living.
And so, another way to react to pain is to continue in your search. Give a chance to other people, other jobs, other friends, other family members, other partners, other peers, other solutions. And continue doing that until you have built enough resilience and strength that the search becomes more important than the outcome.
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