The Value of Pain

by Michelle Atlas

When you experience emotional pain what do you do?

Do you turn toward it, or away from it?

Do you respect it or are you ashamed?

Do you talk about it or hide it?

and… the most important question we can ask is…

Can we allow our pain to soften our defenses, so that we can live from love rather than from fear?

Are You Happy All the Time

In Western culture "happy" appears to be the most popular mood… or so we think.

It's a bit like "groupthink", where everybody thinks that everybody else is happy. So in order to fit in, we project a happy persona too.

Pretending to be happy… all the time, requires ignoring the full spectrum of human emotion and experience, and is a form of self-abandonment and self- alienation (not a very happy place).

The Value of Pain

Our pain is often a messenger of the highest order. After all, when our day to day holds so many external demands, what else would cause us to pause and question our most deeply held values and reflect on our priorities?

Pain interrupts the habitual ways that we think and feel and behave.

It slaps us in the face, hard... so that we may more deeply inhabit our bodies and pay attention to what it wants to teach us.

In my life pain has been my most honorable teacher.

Nothing and no one quite compares, and I've had many teachers!

Pain has…

Catapulted me from my head to my heart.

Pierced the veil of self-protection that kept me isolated from a rich sense of connection with other human beings.

Burned a multitude of false identities to the ground, leaving only the softest skin exposed and the most tender, open heart.

Given me back the essence of who I am, beneath the defenses I had concocted to survive my early years.

Taught me what real safety is and carved a path so deep to its source within, that I can never lose my way again.

Opened me to the gift of living in discovery rather than in knowing.

How has Pain made You Greater?

When times are tough, we always have a choice.

Will we navigate our difficulties as a victim, feeling resentful, embittered and disempowered?

Or will we choose the high road and as a true lifelong learner, with genuine curiosity, relate to our pain as a messenger that brings meaningful lessons and even healing for our greatest good?

What's the greatest lesson you learned from a painful experience?

What's one painful experience you wouldn't trade for anything, because of the person you've become as a result?

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Michelle Atlas, PCC, is a Newfield Certified Coach and Mentor Coach, a Certified Resiliency Facilitator and Facilitator Mentor, and a Sacred Money Archetypes Certified Coach. She has provided resiliency training to top level US federal government leaders and certified resiliency facilitators in Singapore and Sweden. As founder of Michelle Atlas Coaching, Michelle inspires her clients to use their greatest difficulties to become their true self and to empower their relationship to money, so they can create rich, meaningful businesses/careers, relationships and lives. With her lifetime commitment to personal development and spiritual practice, laser focused intuition and a huge transformational toolbox, she’ll help you discover courage you did not know you have, so you can create change you did not think possible. Michelle is also an Al Siebert Resiliency Center Board Member. www.MichelleAtlas.com