Words to live by, no? Well not for me anymore. That used to be my modus operandi (no I am not a masochist). My old story was if I wasn’t in pain then I wasn’t making progress. It amazes me how much I really took that belief to heart. Much of my life has been spent in close relation to pain – whether it was physically through a myriad of accidents, injuries, or operations, or creating emotional pain in my relationships with myself and others. Pain was my friend. We hung out together.
I also prided myself on having a very high pain tolerance. When the relationship to pain becomes as intimate as it did with me, the sensation of pain is virtually welcomed. I got good at concealing pain and just living with it. Over the past 7 or 8 years I have become gradually “pain adverse”. The feeling of pain doesn’t feel as comfortable or as manageable as it used to. I’ve begun to really experience how pleasure feels in my physical and emotional body. It feels really nice.
Pain can also be about boundaries. I’ll give you a good example that happened to me last Tuesday. I went to the dentist for a teeth cleaning. Next life I’m requesting wonderful perfect cavity free teeth. In this life I’m not so lucky. Suffice to say many a dentist has had their fingers in my mouth and it doesn’t bring me joy anymore. So anyway, the hygienist is cleaning my teeth with the spiky pick like instrument probing my gums to see how deep the pockets are. One gum in particular was really tender. I grunted and mumbled that it hurt. (Don’t you get annoyed when with a mouthful of suction devices, tools and fingers dentists think they can carry on a conversation with you?) She kept working it. I asked her to stop. She said she needed to measure the depth and it was for my own health. I explained in a very firm tone that I was there to have my teeth cleaned and if she was going to continue hurting me than I was going to leave.
Now many of you reading this might say “duh”! It’s a no-brainer right to say please stop hurting me? For me it was an epiphany. Normally I would sit there and go through the pain and not say a word. In this case I didn’t feel like being in pain and said so. I felt ecstatic at this simple revelation. I thought back to all the experiences in my life (physical or emotional) that the No Pain No Gain theory was in effect. In so many instances I allowed pain into my life due to a lack of boundaries. What if I made a new choice? What if I said “that hurts, please stop”? Or was the expectation, for whatever distorted reason, to suck it up and take the pain? So much of “being a man” is wrapped around that faulty expectation. Now I make an effort to check in with myself and see how it feels. If it doesn’t feel good I can choose to say no.
I also haven’t given up doing the activities I love (snowboarding, cycling, motorcycling) I now do it without the reckless abandon I used to or without the underlying belief that pain is what I need to experience to feel good. I also have stopped playing in relationships that conjure emotional pain (ok as much as possible – see blog Two Out of Three…). It’s an amazing place to get to after spending so much of my life living the old adage.
I got a new slogan. No Pleasure, No Gain.
Enjoy yourself today!
In light, love, and pain free,
J
I also prided myself on having a very high pain tolerance. When the relationship to pain becomes as intimate as it did with me, the sensation of pain is virtually welcomed. I got good at concealing pain and just living with it. Over the past 7 or 8 years I have become gradually “pain adverse”. The feeling of pain doesn’t feel as comfortable or as manageable as it used to. I’ve begun to really experience how pleasure feels in my physical and emotional body. It feels really nice.
Pain can also be about boundaries. I’ll give you a good example that happened to me last Tuesday. I went to the dentist for a teeth cleaning. Next life I’m requesting wonderful perfect cavity free teeth. In this life I’m not so lucky. Suffice to say many a dentist has had their fingers in my mouth and it doesn’t bring me joy anymore. So anyway, the hygienist is cleaning my teeth with the spiky pick like instrument probing my gums to see how deep the pockets are. One gum in particular was really tender. I grunted and mumbled that it hurt. (Don’t you get annoyed when with a mouthful of suction devices, tools and fingers dentists think they can carry on a conversation with you?) She kept working it. I asked her to stop. She said she needed to measure the depth and it was for my own health. I explained in a very firm tone that I was there to have my teeth cleaned and if she was going to continue hurting me than I was going to leave.
Now many of you reading this might say “duh”! It’s a no-brainer right to say please stop hurting me? For me it was an epiphany. Normally I would sit there and go through the pain and not say a word. In this case I didn’t feel like being in pain and said so. I felt ecstatic at this simple revelation. I thought back to all the experiences in my life (physical or emotional) that the No Pain No Gain theory was in effect. In so many instances I allowed pain into my life due to a lack of boundaries. What if I made a new choice? What if I said “that hurts, please stop”? Or was the expectation, for whatever distorted reason, to suck it up and take the pain? So much of “being a man” is wrapped around that faulty expectation. Now I make an effort to check in with myself and see how it feels. If it doesn’t feel good I can choose to say no.
I also haven’t given up doing the activities I love (snowboarding, cycling, motorcycling) I now do it without the reckless abandon I used to or without the underlying belief that pain is what I need to experience to feel good. I also have stopped playing in relationships that conjure emotional pain (ok as much as possible – see blog Two Out of Three…). It’s an amazing place to get to after spending so much of my life living the old adage.
I got a new slogan. No Pleasure, No Gain.
Enjoy yourself today!
In light, love, and pain free,
J
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