Read This When Your Heart Aches, You Feel Like You’ve Failed & You Feel Like No One Understands (it’ll help)

Pain – the kind where you can’t remember when you last washed your hair, you only leave the house when food becomes necessary to eat, and you wake up every morning with your heart aching deep in your chest – has caused some of the most awesomely miraculous change in my life.

Now, if you were to tell me at these times how good my pain would eventually be for me, I would’ve rolled my eyes, wished our conversation was over, and returned to my computer… trying to work.

Now though, I look back at these times with appreciation.

Without the heartache, the loss, the failures, the “I’m not good enoughs,” I wouldn’t be here. And I happen to like my here.

Bottomline: my pain – especially the most soul-aching – has incited the biggest, most powerful changes in my life.

And once you start seeing your pain this way too – it’ll change all of your crappy times.

 

At brunch, over waffles and falafel the other day, I was talking about this with a close girlfriend.

How so many of us try to cover up our hard times, not really deal with the difficult emotions.

We have an extra glass of wine to numb out after a crappy work day, we skip dinner and hit the peanut butter jar with nothing but a knife after a crummy week, we text an old flame after our current one goes awry because it’s easier – we don’t have to feel.

And look – I get it. I’ve done all of the above.

We’re human.

That means pain is part of the human experience.

And while we might not fundamentally enjoy feeling it, we have to. To move beyond. To learn. To grow.

To open the next chapter.

Like it or not – pain incites change.

You – we – really only change when things get so bad we can’t take it anymore.

We end the relationship when we can no longer deal with feeling super unappreciated. Or, when the fights just become too much.

We sign up for coaching or therapy when we hit a breaking point. Or, when we’ve sunk to a new all-time low.

We quit our job when we’re so unhappy that the thought of going in tomorrow literally eats away at our soul.

We learn how to open our hearts more fully and wholeheartedly after our hearts are shattered, broken, and achy.

We discover and reignite our passions once everything we’ve known has been taken away, and we’re forced to start anew.

We start learning how to love ourselves once hating ourselves begins to destroy our very being.

 

Pain serves a purpose.

It serves a purpose of change.

No one – or no one I’ve ever met – decides to make significant change in their life unless they’re unhappy where they’re at. Their pain is what allows them to grow, push forward, and unleash this part of their being they’ve never known before.

Think about it – have you ever made significant change when you’re super happy?

Most likely not.

So the next time pain comes up. Feel it. Get curious about it. It’s there to show you something.

Contrary to what most of us are taught – heartache, struggle, grief, loss, failure – aren’t bad. They’re simply part of the human experience. And without them, we wouldn’t explore. Pain pushes us into our greatness.

While it doesn’t feel great – it has a purpose.

Tune-in to that purpose the next time it comes along. See it differently – when you’re ready – with hope, gratitude, and love .

Because this pain may very well be the thing that incites your most amazingly awesome, soul-strengthening change to date.

In love and gratitude,
Corinne