If you have ever loved someone or something, there’s a high chance that you’ll experience a deep pain at some point. And when it happens, boy does it suck.
Pain is one of the things you cannot avoid and yet is one of life’s best teachers.

How do you bounce back from a painful experience?

We have been conditioned to do the things that are the exact opposite of what we need. Things like oversharing and reliving the experience over and over again as if it’s still happening.

Think about it, if someone pinched you on Monday and you i) spoke about it with various people ii) spoke about it every day for the next two weeks, what do you suppose the situation would feel like for you by the end of those two weeks? I can bet good money you’ll be worse off than when it initially happened.

This is because you would have used much of your energy to not only expand a situation by repeatedly talking/thinking about it, but simultaneously you would have made it even harder for you to move past it.

Nowadays when things happen to me, I am particular about who I go to for counsel and I do my best to not talk/think about it much as I have seen the results of me doing the opposite. I still on occasion get it wrong.

I’ll give you an example. I had previously discussed my career woes with a multitude of people from various backgrounds, hoping to get sound advice and clarity. They all, wanting to be helpful, gave me advice from their perspective and guess what? It didn’t help. It only made me feel even more clueless and helpless than before. I got to the point where I’d get irritated by people constantly asking me what’s going on, that I started to shut the same people out (cheeky I know), but I had to, for my own sanity.

I had to take responsibility for what I had created by the actions I had taken. Too many cooks…

So rather than do the above, here are a few learned tips:

• Remember that whatever happened is not happening. It’s in the past. Deal with the feelings at hand separate from anything. Write it out of you if need be (this is the best way for me). Don’t try to rush past it, let it take its natural course, but do encourage/help yourself to move forward.
• Be picky with who you tell your gripes to. Don’t go to someone who will be your hype woman or man. Speak to someone who will give you sound counsel.
• Limit the amount of people you talk to about it as well as the amount of times you talk about it
• Trust yourself to know what to do.
• And I say this with love, get over yourself. As someone who has a really hard time getting over mistakes and pains, having this be a driving force for moving forward is a great help.

I have in various instances used the above method to aid in quicker recovery for disappointment and pain, it works. It might sound simple, but give it a go, what do you have to lose?

Xo