Embracing Pain: Finding Growth in Adverse Experiences

Recognizing the positives in painful experiences can lead to personal growth and deeper relationships.

### Embracing Growth Through Adversity: A Journey of Self-Discovery
* 🌱 Resistance to challenging situations can often **blind us to the opportunities and growth** that lie within them.
* 💡 Reflecting on both the positives and negatives of a situation helps us appreciate the **strengths and skills we are developing through adversity**.
* 💔 Personal experiences of shame and isolation can lead to **deep self-awareness and a stronger sense of self**, allowing for **more authentic relationships**.
* 📝 Engaging in exercises that encourage us to view our struggles from a broader perspective can reveal how these experiences may ultimately **serve our best interests**.
* 🔍 "If you look at a situation through the eyes of your **future self**, it can provide clarity on how these challenges are leading you to **something greater**."
* 💪 Overcoming past trauma can empower us to **recognize our intrinsic value** and **break free from societal expectations and superficial validations**.
* 🌈 It's essential to **process painful emotions** before attempting to see the positives in our experiences, as this ensures we **honor our true feelings**.
* ✨ Ultimately, embracing the idea that our **struggles may be orchestrated for our benefit** can shift our perspective and align us with a **more fulfilling path in life**.

when unwanted or bad things happen, it often feels like the forces are against you. You may even feel like the universe itself is somehow against you, and like the situation is simply fully negative and fully detrimental. This makes it much harder to accept what it is and also causes us to go into a state of resistance. Today, I'm going to share with you a spiritual exercise that will pull you out of this state of resistance, as well as potentially bringing you more into alignment with the universe at large. [Music] First, I'm going to tell you a story about an ant. Imagine that somewhere in Texas, there is an ant who is dreaming of a more cooperative colony. Imagine that I knew for a fact that this ant would find the exact colony he is wanting, but in Africa. So, I put him in a little jar, I take him away from his existing colony, and I put him on an airplane bound for Africa. I know that what he is wanting is going to come to him as a direct result of what he is experiencing. I know that

the experience is for him, yet will this be the experience that the ant is going to have? He'll know. He's going to think his world has ended. He will think he has lost everyone and everything. He will experience terror and pain and tell himself that this is the worst thing that could ever possibly happen to him. He will go into a crisis. In our subjective life experience, we do not have the same degree of objective perspective that the universe at large does. And so, the universe is very often in my position in this ant scenario, but relative to you. I don't want this example to put the idea in your mind that you're simply an ignorant chess piece that is being played by the universe or Source or God or whatever name you want to use for it. But there is a great deal of orchestration going on in this universe, much of which you vote for and ask for with your thoughts, words, actions, and desires. And that orchestration is being done from a bigger picture awareness. From our perspective, what is not a straight line.

to what we want and to what is good for us may, in fact, be the very straightest line there is to both from a higher perspective. Every one of us can think back to at least one time where something good, potentially even better than we could have imagined, came as the direct result of something bad, something we really didn't want. What if you had known that would happen in advance? Would it have changed your relationship to the bad thing that happened in any way? Would it have helped you to accept or embrace what was happening in any way? A very potent spiritual exercise that you can do is to brainstorm how the Universe might be for you by bringing a situation into your life, or put differently, how it might be for you for a situation to be happening. To do this exercise, it is very beneficial to write rather than to simply think. Doing so makes thoughts much more solid. The objective is to act like a detective trying to crack the existential case or a lawyer whose job it is to argue for how what is happening

could be for you some things to consider when you are doing this exercise are reality contains both the polarity of positive and negative. What are some of the positives inherent in the reality of the situation? Is there anything you appreciate about the elements of this negative situation, no matter how small? What strength might you be developing? What ability or skill might you be developing? How is this experience giving you an advantage over others? How are you changing as a result of this experience, and how might that serve you? How might what is happening make you better suited to what you truly want? Have you discovered anything new that you appreciate or love as a part of what is happening? If someone else was going through what you are going through, how might it serve them or be a blessing in disguise to them? Is what is happening making you aware of anything new about yourself and what matters most to you? Is there anything that you like about yourself better since this experience, as opposed to before this experience? Is this experience making you

aware of any limitations you've had that you need to break through, and especially to break through to get what you want or become who you want to be. Has this experience freed you from anything? If you continue down the path that you were on and everything stayed the same and this experience never happened, how might that not benefit you? How might you be missing out? What might you be missing out on? How might that lead to something unwanted? How might this be bringing you closer to your desires rather than further away? What does this make possible? What positive experiences might be happening now that are outside your comfort zone but in a really good way? If this were not just an end to something good but a beginning of something good, what might this be the beginning of? What is the situation asking of you and for what Positive Purpose, even if it is Bittersweet? What beauty have you seen during this process? What has this caused you to be more grateful for and to take more appreciation of? What has this caused you to be more committed?

to if you were to stand in front of your grandchildren, what might you tell them about the situation? What lesson might it contain for them? What has the situation made you aware of that you are capable of, maybe something you didn't feel capable of before? What new people have you met as a result of this experience? How is this experience going to cause you to do things differently, and how might doing things differently in that way lead to better results? What have you learned in this situation or as a result of this situation, and how does that give you an advantage? What if you looked at this situation through the eyes of your future self? What might your future self say? If this were leading you to something great, what might this be leading you to? How about if everything stayed the same and this had never happened? What might you regret never experiencing? Has this situation made you aware of a gift that you have to give, especially to other people? If you plan for this experience and even chose it for yourself before this life, why might

you have done that so that you can see an example of this exercise. I have Michaela here with me, who is willing to show you hers. So, I thought about this for a while, such as my recent breakup, not having enough money, and my health issues. But if I'm honest, what is bugging me the most and affecting me on a daily basis is what happened in my childhood. When I was young, I had been sexually abused by my father, and no one in my family did anything about it. I was suffering with this all by myself while my mom made it all the worse by constantly belittling me and making me feel like the family problem. Even the ways I tried to cope with the abuse were made wrong. For example, when I had depression and was laying in my bed, my mom would storm into my room, screaming at me to get up and do something with my life. I was constantly criticized in all the ways you can possibly criticize someone. She criticized my appearance because I

wasn't making myself look presentable enough when part of why I didn't put any energy into my looks to begin with was because I already felt worthless. I was constantly told I wasn't smart enough because I didn't get enough good grades in their eyes. There was little to no positive feedback I received from anyone when I was in elementary school. My so-called friends I had would make fun of me, belittle me, and ditch me for other people they found cooler or more relatable. You are worthless is a message I got from everyone and everywhere. I was completely isolated on all levels because of this. For most of my life, I have struggled with deep shame, self-hate, OCD, anxiety, and hopelessness. So how was all of this for me? I'm now incredibly skilled at recognizing patterns in people and situations, which has helped me in relationships. Unlike many people who were able to cope with overlays and fantasies in their childhood, like my sister who was The Golden Child, I was always in reality and never had

rose-colored glasses on about people or life. I watched my sister struggle in her 20s because of all the fantasies that were shattering for her. I will never have to experience this type of pain. This also makes it so that I am more capable of relationships because I can be both in the positive and negative realities about people. If I hadn't gone through this experience, I would have been embroiled in family patterns and societal expectations. I see my peers struggling with a lack of meaning in their life. They seem to care more about their appearance, status on social media, and keeping up with trends so that they can feel good about themselves and stuck in surface-level relationships. They don't feel like they have a solid place in the world. They are not in touch with anything that is real or authentic about them. I could never anchor my self-esteem into this because it was completely destroyed from the get-go. I could never really let go of what is real for me, even if it was under attack every day as the scapegoat.

of the family. I could literally not adapt to the expectations other people had of me, especially my family. I saw how my sister was caught in the rat race of trying to prove to her parents her worth through performing at things that they deemed as valuable or important. She completely lost touch with herself and her intrinsic value. She needed to spend years having to sort out what is hers versus what is not hers. I have never been able to let go of my core self. My suffering has broken me free from petty things, so I am very aware of what matters. I am not stressed out about the way my life needs to be to impress others, like needing the picture-perfect image. I'm not susceptible to peer pressure at all. A lot of my peers may feel the need to drink or party or have a lot of friends or be popular to be accepted, but I have a really strong sense of what I value. Because of this, I am able to be more compatible and authentic in relationships that are based on what is genuine for me. I am able

to Prioritize what matters from the understanding of the greater picture of my life. What matters to me is having incredibly connected relationships with people who are in touch with what is real, people who value honesty, people who care about other people outside of themselves, etc. What happened to me has made me highly aware of my needs and desires in relationships, so I am closer to what I want than most people are. I am also stronger than most people I know. I am actually able to take pain for things I want and not give up if something gets hard. I notice people struggling with accepting pain and contrast as a part of life and as a part of getting what they want. People are trying to cope with or adapt to painful situations in their life. I'm able to be in a conscious relationship with pain because I was unable to adapt, cope with, or run away from pain. I never do anything with the sole motivation of getting positive feedback from others. I will not be able to be swayed in something I believe in or am passionate

about because of opposing opinions. I have a greater integrity because of this. I am solid in who I am, and I cannot separate myself from what matters to me in life. If I'm being honest, this exercise absolutely sucked because it was really hard to come up with positive examples of how this was for me. It really stretched my brain and made me go past my comfort levels. As being a scapegoat my whole life, I have had terrible self-esteem and self-worth issues, and now having done the exercise, I have realized that I'm better off than most people, especially when I had the realization that I don't do things for the sole purpose of seeking external validation. I realize that that is actually the key ingredient to success, and I don't even have to work at it. Coming from a place of lack and beat down, I'm real now realizing that I have had access to a place of empowerment, something that I never thought was available to me. When you do this exercise yourself, feel free to have this.

slide handy with the prompts that will help you to see more clearly how the situation that you pick might be for you. When something bad happens, you shouldn't bypass the painful emotions you feel and the information contained within those emotions by jumping straight into any exercise, including this one, that is designed to have you become aware of the positive or potential positives of the reality you are facing. The first step should be to go directly into the painful emotions. For this reason, when something bad happens, the first thing to do is an exercise that helps you to become aware of and to feel your emotions and become aware of the personal truths they contain. Something more like the emotional experiencing process. If you want to learn how to do that process, you can watch my video that is titled How to Do the Emotional Experiencing Process. You can treat exercises like this one, where we're intentionally trying to increase our vibratory frequency by going in the direction of recognizing the positive, the things that bring you more into a positive state of being, as a step.

two. What you want to make sure of is that you are not using any exercise, including this one, as a way to deny, negate, suppress, avoid, or escape from the reality of how you feel. This exercise is meant to be done as a loving assistance to yourself, not out of resistance to yourself and to how you currently feel. Doing this exercise is not meant to negate anything. After all, the ant in our earlier scenario did experience super painful things in his process. The arrival at the ant colony he desires in Africa did not make the pain he went through suddenly not real or not happen, but it did change his perspective on the whole process for the better. And he does now feel like it was for him rather than against him. As a side note to this, a video that will benefit you to watch if you are going through something painful is The Gates: The Great Untold Prerequisite to Getting What You Want. Doing this exercise will pull you into alignment with a bigger picture orchestration of your life experience. It will help you to come out of a state of

resistance to what is happening. It will open you up to seeing opportunities and upsides inherent in the situation that you are unable to see before. It may even cause you to make different decisions and take different actions, ones that are far more in alignment with your actual best interests. Have a good week. [Music]

The How Might This Be FOR Me Exercise

Teal Swan

The Ant's Perspective and Life's Orchestration

The ant's experience of terror and pain mirrors our subjective struggles in life, where we often lack a broader perspective.

The universe plays a role in orchestrating our experiences, influenced by our thoughts, words, and desires.

Personal challenges can lead to greater awareness of our needs in relationships and the ability to consciously embrace pain as a part of life's journey.

Bad experiences can lead to positive outcomes, and reflecting on them may change our perspective.

A spiritual exercise of brainstorming how a situation could be for our benefit can provide clarity and acceptance.

By examining the lessons learned and the new opportunities created, we can gain a deeper understanding of our resilience and potential for growth.

The Impact of Struggles on Personal Growth

The author's sister's struggles in her 20s due to shattered fantasies highlight the importance of facing reality, which has helped the author build stronger relationships.

The author observes peers trapped in surface-level relationships and societal expectations, leading to a lack of meaning in their lives.

Through their own challenging experiences, the author has gained a deeper understanding of themselves and is now focused on breaking free from limitations and embracing positive change.

Finding Authenticity Amidst Family Expectations

The author struggles with family expectations and observes their sister losing herself in the pursuit of external validation.

They have maintained a strong sense of self, unaffected by peer pressure, and value genuine relationships.

The exercise of reflecting on their experiences has led to a realization of their empowerment and the importance of acknowledging painful emotions before seeking positivity.

The exercise is meant to assist oneself lovingly, not to suppress or escape from current feelings.

Painful experiences, like the ant's journey, can change one's perspective for the better.

The exercise aims to align with the bigger picture of life and shift out of a state of resistance, ultimately bringing one closer to the universe's orchestration.

Embracing resistance to challenging situations can reveal hidden opportunities and lead to better decision-making.

It's important to acknowledge the positive aspects and personal growth that can come from adversity.

The speaker reflects on their own struggles with worthlessness and isolation, ultimately developing valuable skills in recognizing patterns in people and situations.