Turn Your Pain into Blessings
Author: Liz Shaw

Have you been told that you need to forgive and forget? That you need to just get over it? That it's time to move on? That time will heal all wounds? That you should just put on a happy face?

That advice is hogwash, plain and simple. It's what people say when they don't know what else to say to you, and they are experiencing discomfort at witnessing your emotions. If you follow this well-meaning, but completely wrong advice, you lose out on the priceless opportunity to learn from your pain and create a better future. Instead, you'll bury your pain, creating a future full of bitterness, despair, and hypocrisy. And worse, every lesson you don't learn the first time around, will surely come back to give you another chance and generally in a more painful form.

So, forget all that cliched advice from people who have never walked in your shoes, and learn from me, an ultimate overcomer.

Here is my three step plan for victory over pain, loss, and grief.

1. Accept that everything in the past happened for a purpose.

Those horrible. painful, or disappointing things that are causing you such pain today have brought you great gifts. They have made you into the person you are today, and they are the key to the person of greatness that you are becoming.

Until you can really see and embrace the gifts in the losses that haunt you, you will never be able to fully release the emotions surrounding them. You'll be able to stuff them down, and pretend they aren't there, but that gives them even more power over your life.

I have found enormous power in embracing the pain of the past and the gifts it brought me. Just one example - it has given me the ability to communicate hope to people who are going through grief and loss. I would never be able to do that if I had just stuffed it down without first doing the hard work of finding the gifts.

When I was going through the process of couples counseling to try to save a marriage that was dead, a woman came into my life. She kept asking me if I had found the gift yet. For about a year, I thought she was batty. How could there be a gift in so much pain and loss? Yet I knew there had to be one because her husband put her through so many different kinds of hell that if she found a gift in her experience, that meant there had to be one for me, too.

She used the power of the gifts from her past to whisper hope to me, to walk alongside me through my grief, to love me when I was angry and unloveable, and to believe in me when I couldn't believe in myself. I thank God every day that she did.

Because she persisted in speaking hope into what appeared to be a hopeless situation, I went looking for a gift in the midst of great tragedy and despair, and I found not just one gift, but an abundance of riches. If I had simply pretended to get over it and put on a happy face, those riches, rightfully mine, would have remained unclaimed. And I would have remained miserable.

2. Forgive everyone you feel had anything whatsoever to do with the pain of the past.

Not only do you need to forgive the offender, but also the people who didn't help you the way you think they should have, the people who helped in the wrong way, and the people who unwittingly made things worse by careless comments or actions.

You may also need to forgive God or your personal Higher Power. The pain of loss often remains unresolved because we refuse to admit to ourselves that we pridefully believe that we didn't deserve what happened to us. This belief will trap you in pain and despair even if you have forgiven everyone else on your list.

Finally, you must forgive yourself. If you ever find yourself thinking, "I should have known...." or "How could I have been so stupid?" or "I could have done something to change what happened", then your biggest task is forgiving yourself.

You may be thinking that forgiveness is hard. You've struggled with it in the past, and it seems nearly impossible now in the midst of your pain.

Forgiveness will become easy once you have claimed your gifts, because there is no longer any reason to be angry at anyone. Every person you need to forgive, including yourself, were all part of the process in which you recieved wonderful, life-transforming gifts. After you've done your work on the first step, forgiveness will be easy because it turns into gratitude. And gratitude will always turn into an abundance of powerful, life-affirming gifts.

3. Be prepared to learn a new lesson

One of the benefits of dealing with your past pain mindfully instead of stuffing your emotions is that you won't have to repeat that lesson. Your awareness has evolved to a higher level. You are now open to learning your life lessons with much less pain while recieving more gifts and an even higher level of awareness.

Wouldn't it be easier to learn your lessons the first time, receive the gifts almost immediately, and then walk through forgiveness into ever-increasing gratitude and abundance?

There is so much more richness in embracing the past and mindfully mining it for the wisdom, forgiveness, beauty and abundance within it than there is in putting on a happy face. In my life empowerment groups, one of the principles we embrace is this: "We believe that each day we are a new creation, so we are not defined by our past. We acknowledge, however, that our past affects where we are starting today and can help us understand our current journey."

We were created in the divine image with memories, not so that the past would be a burden on us, but so that we could learn and grow from the past. Simply stuffing the painful experiences of the past without doing the mindful work around the attached emotions will attract similar lessons into our lives.

I challenge you to follow these simple steps to claiming your blessings of the past while releasing the emotions surrounding the events that brought you those blessings. You've got nothing to lose but pain and bitternes, and nothing to gain but joy and abundance.

You don't have to go through this process alone. I have support groups that will whisper hope into your situation, love you when you are unloveable, believe in you when you can't, and walk alongside you in your grief. Send an email to life-empowerment@wingstosoaroverstorms.com for more information on reclaiming your life.






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Liz Shaw is a Life Coach who specializes in helping people overcome loss, pain, grief, and personal tragedy. Using spirituality and creativity, Liz will help you grow wings to fly over the storms of life. Sign up for her inspirational ezine, Wings To Soar, at http://www.wingstosoaroverstorm.com/

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