Pain is Part of Your Purpose
In my last blog post, I talked about pain, and how pain can rob and cheat us of the things in life that will bring us pleasure. Pain also has another purpose, another function: Pain can be used as the fuel that motivates us to make the radical changes we need to make and step into the Great Work of our lives.
Pain: A Different Perspective
I explore pain in this sense when I coach people about the Work they are here to do. Pain is something in life that we seek to avoid, in lots of ways, and most can be unhealthy. Some of us choose to eat the pain away, drink the pain away, drug the pain away.
These self-medicating choices can numb the pain, but it’s temporary; the pain always comes back.
And here’s why: it’s because we are choosing to react to the pain, rather than choosing to learn from it.
Pain comes into our lives to show us something is out of balance, that something needs to change. Pain can wake us up, reveal our mission, raise our consciousness, and expand our knowledge about ourselves, our lives, and our world.
Pain comes up to show us there is a healing that needs to take place, and to teach us some wisdom that we would not gain any other way.
A Client Shares His Pain
A client, Howard, came to see me recently for a session about his Great Work. He is a 6 Birth Path (which I talked about in a previous blog entry). As a 6, Howard is a healer, and his Work is about helping others heal themselves, as well as working on healing himself.
When he came to see me, Howard was embarking on developing his own private counseling practice (one of the careers that reflects a person on the 6 Path). I asked him to tell me about the things in his life that have been painful for him.
He immediately answered that his relationship with his father was a source of pain. I asked him to tell me more about it. He told me that his father was not present in his life, that he never saw him or spent time with him. He did support him financially, but that was the extent of it.
This intrigued me. Author and Personal Development Coach Cheryl Richardson once said something in a workshop I attended, that really struck me. It was about how our parents can have an effect on the work we choose to pursue. She said our fathers can reflect how we bring ourselves out into the world.
I asked Howard what was the challenge he was experiencing in his working life. He said, “I am having a challenge with visibility, with letting people know about me and my practice. I want people to know that I exist.”
His words about his business directly correlated to his feelings of invisibility connected to his father.
I told him two things: First, Howard was going to need to work on healing this part of his life first, as it is showing up in his business. Not only that, he was going to need to consider in what ways he has not been showing up, how he has not been present (or been absent) in other areas of his life.
I say this because behavior we express in one area, we express in other areas as well (if not all of them). As a psychologist, I call this “the spillover effect.”
We discussed a strategy he was willing to commit to, and begin taking action on. One of those things was to consider seeing a counselor himself, for two reasons: First, it would help him with the issues in his relationship with his father; and second, he would gain the experience he needs to help his future clients with the same issue.
Our experiences in life make up the processes we will adopt in our work, especially in service occupations and healing professions.
What’s Your Pain?
What is the pain in your life right now? What is the thing that keeps you up at night, that thing you want to avoid feeling, that thing you want to see removed from your life?
Coaching can help with that.
But here’s the thing: you have to get to know what the pain is, and why it is in your life.
It has a purpose; it’s here for a reason. Befriend it, embrace it.
Coaching can help you to see it differently; rather than letting it hinder you, and keep you stuck, it can become the fuel that motivates you to do the Great Work you have come to the planet to do.
Your partner in transforming pain into purpose,
James
For more information on my “I See Your Dream Job” Career Intuitive Coaching, please visit my Career Code Coaching page.