2024 Advice Series - October: "No Value Ever Shows up Later From Pain Now." - Abraham Hicks

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Background

We have all heard, "No pain; no gain". Even though this style of physical exercise has largely been replaced with other styles of exercise that promote non injury and quick recovery, this is still the unwritten rule when it comes to our emotions and mental health. People feel, or have been taught, that they have to be silent, accept what it happening, tolerate discomfort for the greater good, and endure suffering. In fact, in some ways we all believe we have to suffer, that life involves suffering. And even though, when healing happens, we can find things in suffering and pain that were positive take-a-ways, we don't actually need the pain or suffering for those positives to be available to us. We don't need to experience trauma to develop our intuition, for example.

Now, research is clear that pushing our comfort zones, doing things that are safe but scare us or are new for us, can help us develop a wider comfort zone and realize that most of our fears are largely unfounded. This is not a "No pain; no gain" situation though. This is challenging our beliefs, so we can expand our life experience. This comes from the idea that life is supposed to be fun, exciting, exhilarating, and beautiful, which is opposite of the teaching that life is suffering.

The idea that "no value ever shows up later from pain now" refers to a third way of looking at life. The idea is that reliving and reviewing pain and suffering in our minds, retelling the terrible story, getting others to listen and agree that we suffered or were wronged, and holding in our hearts and bodies that we have suffered, actually creates more suffering. Yes, the suffering, wrong doing, or bad experience is TRUE, but we are causing our own pain NOW, by retelling and reviewing the situation that caused the suffering. Nothing good, nothing of value, comes to us later by doing this.

Let me give you a simple example. We go to work in a rush, where traffic is heavy, and we are late. Our boss is unsympathetic today and our co-workers speak impatiently and unforgivingly to us. We are already feeling stressed, and the day has only just begun. Although the rest of the day unfolds as it typically does, when we go home or talk to a close friend or family member on the phone on break, the first thing we tell is about how terrible the day started. This retelling of how miserably our day started, embellishing the mistreatment from our boss and co-workers, actually makes us feel worse and see our day as a total loss. We are creating more pain now. We do not feel better by reliving the experience. We feel worse. We may get some sympathy from those we tell, but usually we get more stories of how terrible work was for that person too or somethings similar. Even if we do get an, "I am sorry your day was terrible" sympathy statement, we get nothing of value by continuing to make ourselves feel terrible or have pain by retelling the story of being late.

Advice

One thing we can do is NOT retell the negative experience. If the incident was criminal, really criminal, of course, we have to retell the story to the police. However, we do not have to retell the negative story 100 times to everyone we know. We do not have to invite the negative feeling or experience back into our lives or consciousness. We don't. We can simply let it go and never bring it up again. We would do this intentionally, because we know that it will cause more "pain" now, which will bring us nothing good by reliving it. Reclaiming our power from the situation or people who created the situation, by not giving it life, so to speak, and not speaking about it again, allows us to be free and clear of the negativity. Processing the situation in private to learn from the situation or be reminded to leave early to avoid being late, can produce a positive result, but just retelling and rehashing how terrible it was will not, in any way, bring more positivity into your life. It just doesn't.

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