Your pain is your superpower

Your pain is your superpower

This isn’t going to be one of those blog posts telling you how to make the best of a situation despite the pain you’ve experienced. No. Sit down and hear me out - *hastily runs into the kitchen to get a bottle of wine and shouts from afar*; you’re gonna like this!

Here’s my hypothesis: The very thing you think makes you weak at the moment is your greatest accelerator.

We have all heard stories of people who have somehow magically broken the generational spell and achieved incredible things despite the odds. They may have experienced extreme poverty in their childhood and are now live the life of a billionaire, they may have had a serious life-altering accident and now travel the world as a motivational speaker, they may have been born with a physical handicap and still become a professional athlete and absolutely changed the game, or they may have obtained a PhD despite being illiterate for a long time or not having the luxury of a 'normal' education as a child.

In short, the success stories of absolute badasses.

This becomes even more profound when we see siblings who end up having two completely different lives, even though they probably had a very similar upbringing. Both may have had a mother who was an alcoholic, or a father who did not take his parental duties seriously. As a result, one sibling may spend their whole life trying to resolve this trauma, or even end up developing a similar addiction. The other one, however, decides to break that cycle and lives “a happy life”.

I’ve heard and witnessed a bunch of stories like this and listened to a number of podcasts/audiobooks discussing this very phenomenon. So far, I haven’t heard a clear formula that precisely predicts these quote unquote positive outcomes of the latter sibling.

These days, it seems as if we’re all so hyper-focused on one-time events in our childhood or younger years that seem to serve as the perfect explanation for why we act the way we do. I get that. It’s soothing to know why certain situations trigger something in us, and I certainly believe it’s crucial to get to know our blind spots and do our best to resolve or work around them.

But judging by these sibling anecdotes it becomes obvious that past experiences and the environment we grew up in actually have little to no impact on our success later in life. So, what are we missing here? The piece that explains, why some people rise to the occasion and others fall victim to their circumstances.

Like many other topics I touch on in this blog, I don’t really have an answer to this either. However, here are some things I realized up to this point, and you probably have as well:

We all carry our infamous emotional baggage filled with unresolved issues, experiences (some more pleasant than others), heartbreaks, moments of absolute joy and bliss, personal strengths and weaknesses. That’s a fact of life for all of us. While it’s true that for some people the positive experiences outnumber the negative experiences and vice versa, everyone can decide to focus on either end of the stick. We realize this when we have a lengthy conversation with an acquaintance in the kitchen at 1am, or when the girl next to you in the ladies’ room opens up about her hardships after you have both expressed how much you love each other and mutually agreed that you very much are long-lost sisters. In short - everyone carries one.

The blame-game always backfires. Look, even if you’re right. Even if your parents were massively underqualified for this parenting assignment, even if that co-worker was an asshole and even if your ex was the worst person to ever set foot on this planet, it doesn’t matter. You can get all the reassurance you want from your friends or that online community, but who cares? The only person walking around with a fist in their pocket, is you. Live through the experience. Feel all the emotions you need to feel and let them out. Be angry, be pissed, be sad, but don’t get stuck. That’s not what they’re here for. Also, please kindly refer to point one. Though others may not have had the exact same experience with the exact same characters as you, we all have our own personal baggage. So, waiting for your turn to b*tch about your life and do the complain-chanter doesn’t get you anywhere.

Does this mean that I have completely given up the habit of venting? Obviously not. Sometimes, venting is fun and liberating. It is also necessary to give the whole self-improvement project a bit of a break. All I’m saying is that it’s not a tool for success or happiness. Treat it like a cheat meal on your super healthy diet. A venting-vanilla cupcake, if you will. :3

The last point is probably the most profound lesson I have learnt and is part of today’s topic. I’m sure by now you’ve also realized that those who have fought the hardest battles, somehow carry the brightest smiles in the world. It humbles me to my core every time I misread a person because they appear so light-hearted and happy. The ones who, when asked about their past, will tell you their unbelievable, sometimes heartbreaking stories in a calm voice and then go on to say, "But I didn’t die," or "It just makes me appreciate the little moments in life.

“There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

(I had to google this man’s name just to make sure he wasn’t being extra.)

Grief is often used around the topic of death, but I believe this quote holds true for all sorts of intense sorrow, pain or sadness. Truth is, the smartest, kindest and funniest people I have met have been the ones who have been through some real shit and fought the toughest battles in their minds or hearts. A force so dark and heavy that they couldn’t possibly allow themselves to give in to it, as this intense negative feeling would otherwise eat them alive.

A lot of the best stand-up comedians out there struggle with mental health issues like depression and anxiety, which is crazy but proves the point. There’s even a term they have come up with to define this combination of sad person and impeccable humour - it’s "sad clown paradox". Innovative, I know.

Having been through some dark periods myself, and as someone who is objectively blessed with some top-tier humor, I believe I’m qualified to say that I can relate. Some of my hardest laughs have been prompted by people who had every reason to be sad. Having them take my breath away with the intensity of their laughter taught me something beautiful about myself; we probably wouldn't be cracking jokes like that if we weren't dealing with these relentless mental demons. Seriously, these f*ckers made me feel so uneasy and sad when I was just trying to relax in my own little headspace that I had to come up with some humour to lighten the mood.

Another more relatable example for the mentally stable crowd: Have you ever experienced heartbreak? Many of us have that one story. The story that almost broke us and made us question whether love even exists. Do you remember how, after going through the most immediate post-breakup phases, at some point you had to make a decision for yourself which was either to break or to rise to the occasion and use that pain to work on yourself?

Does this ring a bell?

Have you ever presented something to a group of people and gone completely blank halfway through, experienced an unhealthy amount of palm sweat and trembling while trying to get through the slides, or been interrupted by your French teacher just to tell you how bad your French is?

I’m only using real-life examples, by the way. My French teacher taking the piss while I was standing in front of the class was especially mortifying and will forever haunt me. <3

The show must go on, though. I’ve had to give numerous presentations in my life. Some have gone more smoothly than others, but the pain I have experienced from my absolute worst performances has motivated me to avoid that feeling of embarrassment by striving to be better. The only alternative is to run out of the room every time someone asks you to present something. It’s cumbersome, it’ll raise a few eyebrows, but most importantly, life becomes limiting when it’s dictated by fear.

Looking that demon - in whatever shape or form - in the eye is an experience so terrifying that we’re determined to come up with solutions to avoid having to face that monster again.

You can read a thousand books that articulate the feeling of a heartbreak, intense hunger after days of not eating, shame, loss or whatever that emotion or sensation may be, but experience remains the greatest teacher. This fuel, driven by pain, only comes when we have been through it before.

Look, I’m all for carefully unpacking our backpacks so that we don’t burden new people or ruin new experiences with our past traumas. Also, I’m not saying that we should suppress these feelings and “push through” life in a destructive manner.

But there’s so much more to it than just this burden that we need to get rid of. If we start to look at raw pain as this motor that life has equipped us with, it may even be perceived as a blessing in disguise.

We’ve been given the fuel to be ahead of the game, that is, if we choose to learn from it and with it. And that’s our superpower right there.