HOW TO MOVE FROM PAIN TO PEACE

One of the founding fathers of America, Benjamin Franklin, once said, “By improving yourself the world is made better. Be not afraid of growing too slowly. Be afraid only of standing still. Forget your mistakes but remember what they taught you.” Powerful and profound words! This is clear evidence from a great man that experience really matters a lot on the journey to greatness! You need a commendable experience to be celebrated as a great person. You can choose to forget your mistakes, but don’t forget the lessons they taught you. Learn to master the experience and move on. This simple act could take your from pain to peace.

Now, I want you to take a cursory look at your own life. I know if you could, you would go back and just quickly undo some errors you made that have affected your life today so much in so many ways. Don’t double that trouble by trying to go back, the result you have now is called experience. Let it not be a liability to you, it is one of your greatest assets in life. Learn to master it and move on. Life only moves forward, and there’s nothing you can do about it, my dear. Your past is behind you; don’t fight to recapture what is now history. Instead of complaining about your past experiences, why not try to get busy creating new ones.  It’s said that, “You can either suffer the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.”

I always tell people when you’re disciplined in life; you invariably attract disciples in your life so easily. What has happened has already happened, so stop regretting and start disciplining yourself now. From Adam to you, there has been no good thing that has ever come out of regret. Let me tell you this: regret is the only word that is synonymous to death. If you can’t find it like that in your dictionary, don’t worry; you’ll certainly find it in your grave. So stop killing yourself now with regrets before you finally die. Learn to master your experiences and move on. Move on from that pain to the peace your deserve.

Powerful mistakes that can redefine your life are only made in just a moment. Probably you slept with the wrong person just once to conceive that child you aborted or thinking about aborting or you’ve already given birth to, that brings you so much regret when you remember it. Probably, that moment when you said ‘yes I do’ to the officiating minister was the beginning of your self-imposed slavery you wrongly saw as marriage that has put a string on your happiness ever since. Or maybe, it’s that moment when you decided to put all your money in the wrong basket you saw as investment opportunity that has completely crippled your financial life today. Maybe it was that moment when you decided to take up that employment opportunity with that employer that has devalued and poorly rewarded your labor over the years. Those moments of error have now been transformed by Time into painful memories. We all have painful memories in our lives that seem unbearable - memories of abuse, molestation, betrayal, weakness, humiliation or shame. I want to encourage you today to learn to master them and just move on.

Whatever your experiences are or how terrible they might seem to be, I just want you to know that someone has survived it and has become great already. Find examples of people who have had your kind of circumstances or even worse, and still succeeded in spite those circumstances. If that person could overcome them, so can you. If you forget all the lessons in this post, don’t forget this one thing: if you cannot overcome a mess in your life, no one will ever trust your message.