Heard this one before? Change is inevitable, growth is optional. I’m sure you have.

Now how about pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. That was a new one for me when I first heard it, (or read it), a few weeks ago.

Makes you wonder why we don’t live bigger lives. Just maybe it’s because we are trying to avoid the pain. The pain of loss, pain of regret, pain of a bitter end, pain of failure, pain of mistakes, pain of illness, pain of loneliness. If you try to avoid the pain… and so many of us do, you don’t get the gift, which is the experience of full joy.

Pain is inevitable. Yet we try to go above it, below it, around it, behind it… anything but through it. Facing the pain is hard, nobody likes to do hard. Hard sucks. But if it was easy everybody would do it. If you knew the payoff was pure joy, (and it is), then would you go after the pain… maybe even embrace it? If you knew at the end was a rainbow and a pot of golden happiness, would you do it?

I bet you would.

But now the next question? Are you going through the pain, or are you growing through it? Are you learning lessons from the pain or are you wallowing in pain’s greatest joy… suffering. Pain loves it if you suffer, especially for long periods of time. If pain can keep you down forever it wins. But not you, you’re strong enough to face it and fight it. Long-time suffering is a recipe for an early grave. Life will challenge you through imagined fear and real pain to tip-toe to that resting place. It’s your responsibility, it’s your destiny to grow through it and overcome. Don’t forget on the other side is joy.

There is one other type of pain to consider… the one that might be the hardest of all to battle, because it sits just below the surface of your life’s purpose and is easy to step over, to ignore, to look at – but then make a choice to walk the other way. Because with this pain you have options and they are tantalizing. They are dancing around you, taunting you and whispering your name. This pain has enemies that are so attractive – the quick-fix, the shortcut, the magic formula, the indecision, drugs, alcohol, sex and material possessions you think you have to have… or an impulse buy, even though you can’t afford it, and come down off the high of the purchase within days of buying it.

What’s this pain? It’s the pain of discipline. The one pain which if you face it and embrace it, will lead you to the life you need, not the one you want. Joy doesn’t come from getting what you want, it only comes from attracting what you need. The discipline to hold back, to do what is right, to do the little things which seem too small to matter – healthy eating, exercise, gratitude, generosity, compassion, learning, reading – things which if you do them day-after-day-after-day, until they become part of the fabric of your life will lead you massive change. A change which attracts more of the good life into your world, more joy, more abundance, more love. All because you welcomed in the pain and worked to make a change.

The change of pain.