I do not believe there is a person on the planet who has not experienced pain, disappointment, grief, loss, and hardships at one point or another. These are universal experiences, and nobody gets to go through life untouched by at least one of them.

These universal experiences are given for us to evolve and grow. There is always a reason or a purpose for our pain, but it is up to us to derive some meaning out of it so that our pain is not wasted.  Each of you possess a gift in your most hurtful of circumstances.  Every adversity holds the seed of an equal or greater opportunity.

The problem arises that when we are hit by sorrow. We dwell in the pain. We feel victimized and over time, we get unconsciously attached to our pain. We make pain a permanent guest at our table.

The purpose of pain is always specific.  Painful events are presented in your path with the sole purpose of helping you evolve and grow.  However, instead of looking at your pain as an agent for change, as a teacher that comes to give you a valuable lesson, people look at pain as an enemy, as a punishment.

Learning to shift the way you look at your pain can be healing and empowering. You can let it take you down and hostage, or you can use it to get you closer to your ultimate path.  It is not your job to understand or to know the reasons why things happen, but it is your job to derive healing out every painful experience because if you do not, you just wasted your pain.

Healing only happens when you have found the gift in your pain and when you look for the lessons in the things that occur.

When you let go of the pain, you gain wisdom which is the sole purpose of your pain.

Understand that painful events were not put in your path to cripple you, to destroy or rob you of your birthright to joy and peace. They were placed in your path as part of your human soul’s contract to come to achieve fulfillment and as crazy as this may sound to you, pain happens to be one of the most effective teachers for transformation.

Life will often hide your best tools for personal growth inside your most painful experiences. It is up to you to not come out hell empty-handed.  Do not waste your pain by staying stuck in the victim mentality. Resist the temptation to be depressed, blaming God/Life/Source. Instead, do something about it.  Use that pain to fuel you for greater living.

I am not saying it will be easy.  Great things in life are often not the easiest ones but that is where the work is.  It is easy to go through an experience and stay bitter. It is much harder to show resilience and acceptance and use the experience to help and be of service to others.

I believe that we all make soul contracts we make before we incarnate. We chose ahead of time the experiences we will go through on our pre-birth plan that will accelerate our soul’s growth.

Many people find this belief difficult because believing there is a master plan for your life that you collaborated on beforehand, places all the responsibility on you. You can no longer blame your circumstances on life and others because you are conscious that for whatever reason, you chose that experience ahead of time to help you achieve what you came to achieve.

Sometimes our sacrifices, pain, loss, or grief are necessary so that we can help others become what they need to become. When this happens, the soul contract with that individual is fulfilled. Your pain has a purpose and a gift. The purpose is either for yourself and your soul’s evolution, or, for someone else who will benefit from your experience.

Your experience can help someone else overcome their pain and in doing that, you now make a difference in someone else’s life, and thus your soul contract with them is achieved. Consider that perhaps to help another, it was necessary for you to undergo your painful event.

The following story demonstrates the hidden gifts that you find when going through a painful experience.

A mother received a phone call that her 13-year-old daughter died while walking on the street as she was hit by a driver. The mother’s pain was all-consuming. She thought she could not go on and was angry at life for having done this to her and her child who had her whole life ahead. In the midst of her depression, she learned that the driver was under the influence of alcohol and was a repeat offender.

At that moment, this mother found a force within that gave her strength and resilience to fight and to not let the death of her child or her pain go in vain.  Without money, knowhow, experience nor contacts, she started an organization out of her daughter’s bedroom called MADD (Mother’s Against Drunk Drivers) and now that organization has saved thousands of lives and what grew out of her late daughter’s bedroom grew into a massive non-profit organization spreading to not only the US but Canada and Brazil.

This mother, Cindy Lightner made sure she did not come out of hell empty-handed.  She used her daughter’s tragic death and her pain and found the purpose. Today Cindy educates and brings awareness about drinking and driving and her message reaches teenagers in high schools to make them aware of the consequences.  The purpose in her pain, the gift in this mother’s pain, has been a force for good, it has changed political policy and has made a difference in the world.

Cindy has saved countless lives through MADD. None of the lives Cindy has saved would have been possible without having to undergo that painful experience of losing her daughter. Thus, one could argue that their soul contract was for Cindy’s daughter to pass so Cindy could save thousands of lives.

You do not have to like everything that happens to you. Not at all.  But it is your responsibility to do your own healing and that healing can never take place until you can derive the purpose of your pain.

Pain can be incredibly hurtful. Yet in the intensity of it, in the depths of it, is the treasure. Life has a master plan that we cannot see because we are only given one piece of that plan at a time and when you get one piece at a time it makes no sense on its own. It is not until later, that we see how that piece was necessary to complete the bigger picture of our life. Like a puzzle.

What painful challenge are you going through now? Have you considered that this difficult time is preparing you for something greater?

Consider that this hurt you are experiencing is going to give birth to something new in your life. So, learning to be grateful for the gift and purpose it holds is a key ingredient in overcoming pain.

In the Gratitude Experiment system that I created and teach, my students learn to look for the gift in their painful events and build the resilience necessary to know that, as painful and unexplained as things may be and seem in the moment, they have faith that their circumstance is part of a greater plan.

Remember, it is up to you to not come out of hell empty-handed. Let your pain lead you to your life’s purpose.

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with gratitude,