Marvelous Pain

Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever. - Lance Armstrong 

It is normal, almost natural, for folks to cringe away from whatever causes them pain. Pain killers and related analgesics are probably the most widely used drugs in the world. We numb ourselves with sex, alcohol, narcotics and noise in frantic measures directed at preventing the experience of pain. But then pain can be a good, indeed great, thing to have in every area of life.

Imagine for a moment life without the sense of pain. You would put your hands in fire and burn to death without realizing what was happening. Pain then serves as our warning of things gone bad and gives us the opportunity to take a different path or course of action. Madeleine L’Engle in her book, A Stone For a Pillow, wrote: 

The most terrible thing to happen to a leper is the loss of pain. The hands and feet of the leper become useless stumps not because of leprosy, but because the leper feels no pain. If the leper loses fingers or toes, as so often happens, it is not because of the disease itself, but because the leper is not warned by pain that the fingers and toes are being hurt, and therefore damage or infection are not prevented. Pain is an angel to tell us that something is wrong. The body which cannot feel pain suffers terrible and often fatal injury.

In our success journey, we need the feeling of pain all too well to tell us when things are not going according to plan. Pain in this case serves as our inner warning system and we are able to take redress.

The pain will come in various ways. It may be in lost deals, or attainment of non-relevant things, or exhaustion, or depression. Whatever way it presents itself, identify it and take proper actions to address whatever the cause may be. Do not numb your senses with pain killers such as turning a blind eye to it or stubbornly continuing on your journey because that may mean, like the leper, losing far more than you bargained for. 

To survive gallantly the pain phase it is important that you know that pain is, more often than not, a temporary experience and will fade away if you act in a decisive way to curb its cause.