Emotional Pain is a Gift
Negative feelings can be a gift if you use them for self-discovery.
Too often people simply wallow in their emotional pain. They run horrific imaginary scenarios in their mind. They hold false beliefs like, “My children should listen to me”, “My parents should love me”, “My wife should satisfy me sexually” and then they experience the hell of noticing all the ways in which these beliefs are not true.
For the individual, wallowing in emotional pain, in itself, serves no real benefit. The outcome is generally negative and takes the form of self-destructive action and the consequent erosion of self-esteem.
Emotional pain when it infects a society has immense negative power. Emotional pain can grind the bones of the anxious and depressed masses, and it can even kill. Genocide, war and terrorism are the consequences of emotional pain on a global scale.
For everyone, both individuals and society, emotional pain has the power to motivate one to seek out with surgical precision the Hows and Whys of one’s beliefs. This question “Is my belief really true?” is path out of darkness and into the light.
I believe that the world’s greatest proponents of happiness are people who have felt the most severe emotional pain. I believe that the funniest stand-up comedians are also some of the most tortured souls.
Emotional pain is beneficial in the sense that it can foster in one to seek happiness with laser-like focus.
Emotional pain can liberate huge inner resources to bring ruthless clarity to ones life.
Remember the emotional pain that you have suffered in the past, and use it as a dynamo to help fuel the investigation of your thoughts and pursuit of happiness.
Use your emotional pain to serve you, not destroy you.
