Sorry for the late post, friends, I have been traveling, and jet-lag is a real thing! On that note, I want to dive deeper into this topic than I did here, so we might expand on this in the future. Let me know if that’s something of interest.
This is not a post about the creaks, cricks, and zings associated with aging.
We all know it's part of the deal as we get older. I’m in my late 40s and live a pretty healthy lifestyle. I don’t smoke, I rarely drink, I eat whole foods, and consume very little sugar. I am also reasonably active and on my feet most of the time. All that being said, I still have pain. All kinds of pain, but hey, I’m not complaining.
Pain is an essential part of life, but not in the way that you think.
The standard definition of pain is “An unpleasant feeling occurring as a result of injury.” I think this definition is too narrow. It should read, “An unpleasant feeling as a result of a deviation from the norm.” If it seems like I am splitting hairs here, it's because I am. Pain comes in all shapes and sizes, and not all pain comes from injury. Having your heart broken and breaking your leg are very different things. Both are painful. Certainly, cracking a bone qualifies as a classic injury, but what about heartbreak? What about regret, worry, anxiety, and fear? I would argue that these things cause pain, too and don’t come from a specific injury but rather from change or at least the potential for it.
You see, it’s the Change that is painful.
If you have ever cut your finger with a knife, your skin started out unbroken and then… changed to cut open. In this case, the injury caused a change, and the change registered as pain in your brain. How about grief? It’s painful to lose someone dear to you. One day they are there, then your world changes, and they are not. These are extreme examples, of course, and extremes tend to stand out. These extreme examples teach us that pain is bad and should be avoided.
But pain is just a signal that lets us know that a change is happening. (Or will soon!)
See, most of the pain we encounter in our lives is not from broken bones or broken hearts. Most of it comes from the anticipation of a change. The problem is that because we associate pain with something bad, when we begin to have an “unpleasant feeling,” we do our best to stop doing whatever it was that was beginning to cause us pain. This seems like wisdom until we consider the outcomes.
What happens when the things that are really good for us are painful to do, or at least start?
· Working out is painful, so we avoid it.
· Making a budget is painful, so we avoid it.
· Having hard conversations is painful, so we avoid it.
You get the idea. Our brains have been wired to avoid pain, which is holding us back.
We avoid all kinds of beneficial activities because they would cause a change in our life and therefore elicit a pain response. In fact, we have become quite good at doing anything other than what we should be doing. There is another name for this, it's called procrastination.
Procrastination is really just a coping mechanism to avoid pain.
Here is where things get interesting. If we know that pain is an indicator of change, then if we want to make a change in our life, we can look for where the pain is coming from and follow it. If asking for a promotion makes your stomach twist into knots, that’s probably a good indication that you should focus your attention there. If doing something makes you uncomfortable and not doing it feels easy, you should dig into where the discomfort is coming from. When faced with this choice, I ask myself this simple question…
Is the pain of staying the same greater than the pain of change?
The answer to this question often tells you the direction you should go. This is where the benefit of age and wisdom come in. I realize now that I made several decisions as a young man where I avoided the painful option. All that did was set the stage for a later decision with higher stakes. I know now that the cost of doing nothing seems painless at the time, but in reality, I am only postponing the hurt. Sometimes that pain is small and easy to manage. Other times it can be life-changing.
The greater the intensity of pain, the greater the potential for change.
Whether big or small, pain is not something to be feared but something to be embraced. Use it as a tool to move forward, grow, and become the best version of yourself. All things change. Some we have control over, and some we don’t. Recognizing where the pain in your life is coming from will allow you to know the difference.
As far as the creaks, cricks, and zings, well… We can dive into that another time!