Empower Yourself to Let Go of Pain

Every time an event occurs in our lives, two things will definitely be present:

1. The event - the incident, the experience, the thing that happened or did not happen.
2. The emotions associated with the event – how it made you feel – the pain: sadness hurt, anger, guilt or fear (events also bring positive emotions like joy, serenity, pride etc but that’s the subject of another post :) )

When you recall the event, you will feel the emotion. When you relive the event, you relive the emotion. That’s how we are made. The pain that we feel as a result of a negative event stays with us as long as we let it. Weeks, months, years, and for some, decades and decades.

Different people will deal differently with the pain yet there is one surefire way to remove the pain and that is to discover the third thing present in all experiences: the lessons from the event.

It’s not easy to discover the lessons on our own.

Chances are you’re overwhelmed with the emotions and bogged down with asking all the wrong questions, especially the “Why me?” question: Why did this happen to me? There are no answers to this question. It just begs more and more questions.

Despite knowing that this is a time to be objective and positive, you don’t know where to begin. Talking about it to someone and talking about it more may lighten the load, and you may feel relieved, but only for a moment.

You want clarity but you can’t see the trees for the forest. And it’s a dense and dark forest. It’s not a walk in the woods.

The pain remains. Until you learn the lessons.

How does one begin to discover the lessons when something negative happens? If you really want to discover the lessons, you have to ask the right questions. The wrong questions will drag you deeper and deeper into the spiral but the right questions will lead to a breakthrough moment when you feel lightened! 

"Why" questions are the wrong questions.

For example, “Why did this happen?” And the answer always begins with “Because….” And that’s not a lesson. Keep drilling down by asking “Why…” five times more and each time you will just get deeper and deeper into the cause of the event. You may understand it more, but it doesn’t mean you will accept it. You will not discover the lesson.

The right questions begin with “How”

When we ask “How” questions, our minds looks for answers and for a moment, we look outside the emotion. For example, “How did this happen?” We will discover some action we took or didn’t take. And then we ask another “How” question, like “How can I avoid this next time?" Then another question like “How can I do it better next time?” And that’s how we discover the lessons.

“Why” questions disempower us. “How” questions empower us.

When we are disempowered, we continue to feel lost and we lose focus, we become more and more demotivated. Nothing changes and we look to the outside for something to happen to take the pain away. When we are empowered, it’s because we are no longer driven by pain but by the motivation to be happy, not with the outcome of the event but with what we can do now that the pain is gone. We remember the event – whatever it was: loss of a job, failure with a goal, a tragic accident – but we don’t feel the emotion anymore.

Once we understand the lessons - our takeaway from an experience - we can detach ourselves from the emotion and let go.

In a nutshell, the lessons we learn from a negative event in our lives, whatever it may be - the loss of a job, the loss of someone dear, a breakup - motivate us to move on, get on with our lives and do better if it ever happens again.

Whatever difficulties you are experiencing and whatever emotions you are feeling as a result - whether it is sad, hurt, angry, guilty or fearful - try the "How" questions. Start with changing the questions you ask yourself. It is the first to moving on with your life.

Have a great day.

Coach Rohaizan

Get to know me at Rohaizan.com