When you face something painful in your life… when a friendship ends, a marriage ends; a boss lets you go and no longer needs your services (Hurt comes in different forms, so feel free to base it on whatever form you want as I continue writing.)
We usually believe that the pattern is as follows:
(Act: Something hurtful happens)
(Reaction: We feel hurt and become vulnerable)
When in reality there is something else that happens after the action and before the reaction, something that happens very fast that we don’t pay attention to until later when you have moved on from the situation. That thing is basically “A thought”.
How? Here is how the pattern really goes:
(Act: Something hurtful happens)
---> Different "thoughts" haunting you at that point <---
(Reaction: We feel hurt & vulnerable)
You see how something that simple can change your entire view and approach towards a situation? What happens at that point is that the situation doesn’t make you feel horrible, and the situation does not hurt you… what really hurts you is your approach and the thoughts you get after the action has been taken. Let me break it up for you in an example to make it simpler:
You have a friend who has always been there for you, always told you how amazing you were, always told you how great you are – one day that friend no longer existed. This is where your brain starts functioning and tells you “wait, that person has always been there, has always cared, and always told me how amazing I am; they no longer think that, which means that I am not all those amazing things – I am worthless, I am not perfect, etc…” and the thoughts keep going and going and this phase in the pattern might not even take (10 seconds) but your mind is that powerful that it manages to convince you to question yourself, your self worth, your beauty, intelligence, and everything all at once with maybe an extra second to spare! – Right after that, you start feeling the hurt and pain; and that is the reaction to your thoughts.
Reality is that this person’s opinion matters cause it changed, and it comes a shock to you because it's something foreign to you and to your brain; which is only normal. They used to care and be concerned; they suddenly stopped.
How do you change the pattern and avoid the excessive feeling of pain? Think of all the other people around you who think wonderfully of you, who think of you still as the amazing person that you are – those are the people who know your worth; why are you so invested in one person’s opinion? Why not think “I have friends, family, and people around me who think I’m amazing, and just one person thinks I’m not all that” instead of thinking “I don’t care what anyone else thinks, this person doesn’t think I’m all that.” Always use the mechanism of redirecting your thought when your thoughts start to control and question your self-worth.
I hope by now, you can understand how powerful you are, and how you are in control of how you feel, not only that but who makes you feel what. You give people the power to make you feel sad, happy, angry, upset, and the list of emotions goes on.
Which takes me back to the first line of this blog post, “Much of your pain is self-chosen.” There is not much more to say except that this is your answer to your prayer “I wish if this didn’t hurt this much” or “I wish I could make this feeling go away” because in reality, you do have the power, and you are capable of controlling your feelings, emotions, and people who try to mess around with them.
So, tell me now, how angry are you with yourself for all those times that you have allowed yourself to be hurt, when it was all you, yourself, and your thoughts? If you got anything out of what I said, the following sentence wouldn’t even trigger the slightest feeling of anger in you. That’s control. That’s where you want to be in life. If emotions had a goal, it would be this feeling of control.
Until later...