Pain, Your Driving Force

Today, I want to talk about pain and how to use it to your advantage.

You see Michael Jordan didn't become the greatest basketball player that ever lived because he had natural talent. Jordan became the greatest basketball player because he didn't make his high school basketball team.

Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson didn't become the greatest boxer that ever lived because he had natural talent. He became the greatest boxer that ever lived because when he was a kid, he got beat up so bad, that one day he decided he didn't ever want to get beat up again. That pain that he felt, led him to tap into such a great power that he broke the Olympic record with a six second knock out.

You see a horse can not achieve its greatest power, its fastest speed, its greatest potential until it is first broken. The pain that you incur in your life, that can become your fuel, your driving force, your path to greatness.

The other night, I was cooking fried chicken and I burnt my hand with some oil. As I washed my hand, I noticed how sensitive my hand was. In fact, it is still sensitive to the touch. As I walked out onto my porch, I realized that the pain, the hurt, had opened my body to feeling. Feelings that I would normally ignore. When you are struggling in life, when you feel that pain, you will be surprised the feelings that you feel, the feelings that your body becomes open to receiving, the feelings that you would normally ignore. You see, sometimes the keys to success are screaming so loud in front of you that it is unbelievable. But sometimes, it takes some pain, to open your mind and heart to seeing and feeling the truth that lies before you.

HIJACKING

One day, while driving in the car, my middle daughter faced my youngest daugther and said, "Gopher", making a funny face. My youngest daughter immediately changed from being happy, to becoming very upset, yelling, "I'm not a gopher!" What had happened here was that my middle daughter had, over time, associated this phrase and these actions with a series of teasing and taunting actions. Any other child, might have seen the same thing and started laughing.

At first, my youngest daughter might have taken a few minutes to respond, realizing the intention. However, after a while, the response became more and more sudden until no thought process was needed to evoke the response. In fact, one might argue that she had no control over the response at that moment, because she had already hard coded the response as a protection and defense mechanism. When someone does something that invokes a reaction beyond your control it is called hijacking. Your response occurs so fast that you do not even have time to think about the response.

It can be funny to watch people be hijacked. However, this occurs all to often in marriages. You might find a spouse becoming extremely upset when the other moves a spoon. Over a long period of time, moving that spoon has become attached to a conundrum of feelings and events. If you ever, feel like you have been hijacked, you must find the deep roots and unroot them, by questioning all the beliefs that caused the hard wiring to occur in the first place.

SELF HIJACKING PHRASE (AKA LIMITING BELIEF)

I often hear people say things like, "I hate math." When I hear this, I know it is a well rehearsed phrase, one stated over and over to the point that they believe it. Let's just call this a self hijacking phrase. If you ever hear a voice in your head, telling you something that you have told yourself before, beware. This may just be the self hijacking phrase, that is preventing you from growing in a particular area. While some will tell themselves over and over, "I can't because such and such happened to me," others will tell themselves over and over, "I must because such and such happened to me."

Dedicated to Thanh Ngo.



This post was reposted from http://sizuservices.blogspot.com/2012/10/pain-your-driving-force.html, originally written on October 24th, 2012.