Practice Personal Growth by Learning to Work through the Pain

If you want to improve your life, then you are going to have to practice personal growth by facing and overcoming challenges. The thrill of Victory is one of the sweetest sensations you can experience, but you'll never feel it if you live your life inside a compact little bubble where nothing ever changes.

It's a classic irony of the human condition that our instincts drive us to expand and to grow, yet at the same time we enjoy comfort, security, and recognizable boundaries. However, those same comfortable boundaries quickly become a self-imposed prison unless we continue to improve ourselves in some way.

Photo Credit: Vicky SUnless you want to live the rest of your days in your safe little box, you're going to have to learn how to push your own limits, thus opening yourself up to experience the growing pains that herald the victories of your future. Falling flat on your face is the quickest, most effective way to make you appreciate the simplicity of being able to stand up straight, and as unpleasant as the fall may be, you'll stand up that much taller from that point on because you'll have the memory of that contrast.

Visualize the end result and ONLY the end result

As most of my readers know, I am going through the 90-day P90X workout program right now, and how can I put this bluntly? It's hard!

However, I have several goals that depend completely or in part on my success with that program, so whenever I am feeling weak (literally or figuratively!) I visualize the end result, and I focus on it fiercely with all of my will power. What I don't do is think about how hard an exercise is, or about how much I don't want to workout, or about how I have work on my computer that I want to do during my exercise time.

One of the workouts is a rather intense yoga routine that includes some very difficult abdominal exercises towards the end after you are wiped out from more than 70 minutes of yoga poses. The "no pain" route to take would be to drop to the floor, rest, and just give up. The "pain" route involves me visualizing the six-pack that I am building, and focusing only on that vision, to the exclusion of everything else – including the pain itself.

The "no pain" route is easy in the moment, and gives a fleeting, instant reward – the opportunity to rest. The "pain" route involves significant discomfort, and no immediate noticeable results, but the long-term rewards make the pain very much worth working through.

Think of it as growth, not as pain

Sure, whenever your heart is broken, your bank account is vacant, or you're gasping for air while exercising, it's kind of hard not to realize that pain. However, the trick to personal growth is not in avoiding growth opportunities, but rather in learning from them.

• If you don't know the pain of a broken heart, then you also don't know how to appreciate a loving and happy relationship.
• If you don't know what it's like to wonder if you'll have enough money to pay your bills, then you don't understand the value of the money and the resources that you have.
• If you don't know what it feels like to be unhealthy, fat, or injured, then you don't know how wonderful it feels to be the opposite of those things.

Rather than viewing your painful experiences as nothing but painful experiences, instead, be grateful for the contrast they show you that will then allow you to appreciate success in those areas that much more once you have attained it.

Once you have learned everything that you need to learn from being broken-hearted, poverty-stricken, or out of shape, then apply what you have learned so you can avoid that pain in the future. 

Also, no matter how bad your pain is, it is there nonetheless. If you are going to be experiencing it anyway, wouldn't it be better to get something good out of the deal?

Don't forget to accept responsibility

The absolute shortest route that you can take towards reliving pain in your life that you didn't like the first time around is to blame it all on someone else.

• My ex-husband/wife is a jerk
• My boss doesn't care about my needs
• My kids won't give me space
• My brother/sister/mother/father treats me bad
• My friends are holding me back
• My genetics keep me from succeeding
• My lifestyle forces me to live my life this way
• My schedule keeps me from exercising and eating right

Crap, crap, and more crap. YOU are the only person who is now – or ever has been – responsible for the pain that you experience in life. Here is a short and simple way to remember this:

If it happened to you, then you were a part of it.

You may not have directly asked for something negative to come your way, or to be injured, or to get fired, or to have a relationship end badly, but if you were there at all (and you were!), then you share in the responsibility of the negative circumstances that are now causing you pain.

If you keep blaming other people or the outside world for your pain, then you will simply be handing over the reigns of your life to other people or to the outside world. You will continue to experience pain that is allegedly because of other people until you learn to take responsibility for the decisions that you make.

Remember, the goal here is personal growth. What exactly have you learned if it's always someone else's fault?

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