“Pain with reflection” = ” awesome Growth”!
By: Pavan Raheja
Tags: Human Behavior, Pain, Emotional Intelligence, Self Improvement, Self-awareness

This is an idea has had a huge impact on me, a long time back unknowingly and now knowingly. I will try to discuss only the emotional pain, causes and some remedies to deal with it. Also, in many cases, even physical pain can be managed if we can handle the emotional pain well!

I always try to learn from the best minds in the respective areas, as books have helped to do that in a big way. But pain is one aspect which can be best learnt by our own selves. I have been reading a lot last year, life, philosophy(Hindu, Buddhism, Christianity, Sufism), Work-related books, self-help, and sometimes fiction(read 21 books in 2018). I will try to get into the nitty-gritty from various sources, observations of people and of self.

The best we can do is embrace the pain and accept it to make our selves better. Pain is something we all try to avoid, we try to run away from it. Ones you encounter with pain, instead of ignoring, take it up in a way to enable you to find a solution for progress. Ones you realize how effective it is to accept the pain in an open manner and reflect upon it, you will completely change the way you be in a painful situation next time. Instead of running away from it, we can accept it, identify it, reflect upon it and learn how to better ourselves and in turn deal better with it.

Emotional Pain can be from any reason it can be caused by our Personal or professional life. When we do experience pain, we have two choices, either to accept it or continue in our delusion by ignoring it. The most important thing to keep in mind during these moments is “to catch hold of it with awareness without a reaction”. It’s definitely not easy to realize it in that particular moment. But we can definitely at least note it and reflect upon it later. You would come across a lot of people who would gift you, “tough love”. A lot of moments you would get your blind spots from others. It is also a fact we don’t readily accept our own weakness easily and are also not aware of them. A simple strategy can be helpful for this. If we accept our weakness does not mean that we become them. We are definitely not our weakness forever, it, in turn, gives you the opportunity to get better with. It can enable you to work our on solutions to enable progress. But always remember we can’t improve what we can see(our blind spots), which gives us an open reason to accept criticism without judgements.

We have been in tough and painful moments a lot of times. I have personally been in many unlimitedly, previously being driven by my unaware emotions, I have never been able to understand, the only thing I had done was an unconscious reaction. Even some of you may recollect some moments in your work dealings(daily activities), personal relationships(family, romantic, friends, colleagues, daily interactions, etc). Do any of them in your previous situations make you realize your own blind spots? If your answer is yes. We need to start embracing those uncomfortable situations in better ways, be assured the discomfort is temporary but the progress thereafter is “Awesome”. Its a tough choice we make at the moment of pain, the easier choice we have further.

A deeper understanding via scriptures of various books would help us know that pain does exist but we purely misunderstand it. The only problem in life and the pain is, life isn’t happening the way you want it to happen. Is there any other problem? If we look into a deeper perception, aren’t we just reacting to our sensory impressions stored within our minds? If we understand it further, we are just reacting to the thoughts which come into our minds stored previously from past experiences. A simple way to keep this point clear within us by understanding a basic rule, we are not our body, nor our mind which is created via unconscious impressions, neither our thoughts nor our pain. Thus, our pain cannot define us and identify to ourselves. The best way is to be proactively receptive to the pain without judgement and immediate unconscious reaction. It can be explained by a simple analogy, imagine yourself driving a car, as a higher self than your hands(thoughts steering), accelerator(thoughts), now if you allow the accelerator, and steering controlling you, would you be able to drive safely? The same we can try hard not to get driven by our thoughts, mind, emotions, pain unconsciously. Instead, just observe and react as per our control to have a sane and safe drive!

Just copying a useful quote:

“A transition is always painful

From filth to cleanliness

From darkness to light

From falsehood to truth

However, the discomfort is temporary

When you get used to the new state you wonder how and why you put up with filth, darkness and falsehood for so long

You’ll never go back!”

Also, I wrote about Errors, mistakes, previously, check it out. I suggest similar remedies like Yoga, Meditation, Conscious awareness, non-judgement to catch hold of the pain, reflect, act and progress awesomely! Cheers!

References: Principles(Ray Dalio), My Gita(Devdutt Pattnaik), Power of Now(Eckhart Tolle), The Bible(Audio), and a lot of more books I have read and learnt from.