I was talking to a client just last week who is going through a lot of pain. They’re going through a breakup, or what seemed like a breakup in their marriage. Now, they didn’t know if this breakup was going to result in just separation because they definitely were going down that path, or full divorce or even just complete hatred, dividing of their physical belongings, but also their children. Most of the business owners I work with are married and have kids, and this pain conversation comes up often.
I’m going to share with you the three choices you have when you receive pain. I’ll show you examples of how it applied to him. Now, the first thing and the role that he fell into, which I would say probably 90% of us fall into. When we encounter pain, the first thing we do is we start to either ignore it or blame other people. Now, what this does is allows us to play the victim role. We blame events, we blame other people, or we blame ourselves. In this case, for this gentleman, he was blaming his wife, his spouse for what she was doing, and more importantly, what she wasn’t doing and blaming the events that occurred, that had led up to this situation where they definitely were going down separation, but more than likely, headed down divorce. That’s the first thing you can do. You can blame events, you can blame self, you can blame other people, whatever it is. That’s choice number one.
Now, choice number two is when pain happens, you can change your conditions. You can change things around you. You can change what you’re doing and what have you. This is a choice that they were making. They were separating. They were changing their conditions. Now, he was taking both of these going on blaming her, blaming the events, and then, really, changing his conditions by separating. He had already moved out of the house. He had already moved his things in, was buying furniture by the time our session came up and he was telling me all about his situation.
That’s the second thing that can come up. When pain hits us, we may progress … Usually, it’s a progression. We blame someone else or others, maybe even we blame ourselves. “Oh, poor me. I’m the victim,” or, “I’m not good enough,” and we’ve talked about that. If you’re feeling like you’re not good enough, go back to a previous daily growth hack. We talk about ways to overcome that kind of self-talk.
But we’ll change our conditions. We’ll change our conditions. Now, this can be positively, or it could be negatively, and oftentimes, we’re changing our conditions because we’re running from something. We’re running away from the problem or running away from the pain because pain isn’t something most people run towards. It hurts. That’s why it’s called pain. You don’t want it.
But there is a third choice, and the third choice I’m going to recommend that you really look forward to or look towards when you encounter pain in your life, and that’s changing your blueprint. Blueprint really has to do with your physiology, your focus, and the meaning. Physiology, how you’re standing. Are you upset, you angry, or are you standing a confident, poised position? Get your physiology straight. Your physiology helps your psychology, and getting those two together really bridges the gap.
Then changing what you focus on. All too often, when pain comes, we just focus on that pain, which then seems to stack the pain. The pain builds when we focus on it. When we choose to focus on what’s positive though, the pain seems to dissipate. It doesn’t hurt as much. Now, I see this, I have a one-year-old son. He falls down. He just start crying and screaming. If I pick him up and I change his focus on something else … For example, I was making breakfast. He fell down. I picked him up. I changed his focus on my cooking. Instantly, he stopped crying. He forgot the pain. Yeah, it still hurt him a little it, but he forgot, and he was into what I was doing.
Now, this is a gross exaggeration, but the same thing happens to us. When I look at my client, he was focusing on what his wife wasn’t doing. He was focusing on the failure of his relationship and calling himself a failure. He was focusing on the negative. When we got him to switch that standing up tall and straight and focusing on all the great things that he had built, the things that they had cherished … They have beautiful kids together. He had a lot of great things to be focusing on.
Then changing the meaning. Now, what does this separation mean? Well, to him, it meant failure. He failed in the relationship. He wasn’t a good husband. He wasn’t a good man, and therefore, wasn’t a good person, but when he changed the focused and then changed the meaning, what does that mean to you, he saw an opportunity. He saw a way. He said, “Wow, this separation actually could be a way for my wife and I to come together stronger, a time for me to become a better husband, a better man,” something I call the bulletproof dad. He saw this now as an opportunity, and his energy just increased, energy increased dramatically, and the pain, he physiologically looked 10 years younger, and I was having a video conversation with him about this.
What I’m telling you now is you have three choices to make, and I recommend you to choose door number three each and every time. Yeah, for most of us, we still go through the escalation ladder of getting angry, getting upset, and then maybe changing our conditions, but the more and more you practice this, you go through that escalation ladder quicker, and you close that gap. Then right away, you go right into your blueprint.
If you’ve been practicing this for a long time, this might even take you as little as five seconds or less to give into that and go, “Okay, what can I focus on? What do I make it mean?” If you have a lost love one or something like that, what can you make it mean? Change your physiology. Change what you focus on, and then change your meaning, and that will give you power, passion, and opportunity.
That’s it for me today. As always, share this with at least three people so you can build your tribe and have conversations that matter, and if someone shared this with you, that means they think that you can play at this game, and so congratulations. That’s a huge compliment to you. I ask you to pay it forward to somebody else as well.
Then of course if you’re interested in having conversations like this that go to a much deeper level where we actually bring in other experts, talk about subjects as such a higher level, go over in just look at the Author of Your Own Story University. There’s an application process, but make sure you apply so you have the opportunity to get in when a seat opens up for you.
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