How to Overcome Pain and Live a Life You Love
Posted by Wendy Jacobs in Mar, 2015
Many people ask me “How to overcome pain and live a life you love”…
My answer is simple…not easy…But defiantly simple.
It all comes down to one thing, Emotional Fitness.
The capacity to influence yourself to feel the feelings you want most despite what is going on around you. It’s a discipline of physiology, focus and meaning and one that is well worth its mastery.
There is no true happiness or true personal transformation without emotional fitness
If you are going to have any kind of great quality life, if you want to know how to get back on your feet when life knocks you down over and over and over . Then this is an area of life you have to master.
I was having dinner with a group of ladies a few weeks ago one of them asked me a question, She said, “Wendy, How are you? How are you doing? Really?” I smiled like I often do and I knew that on some level she wanted me to open up and share my pain, which would have been very easy to do. But I wanted to share something that was more valuable, so I answered her honestly and I said, “I’m great, I have had my tough days but mostly I am happy”. She said “you look amazing”. I said, ” Thank you, you can’t run and feel depressed at the same time “ 🙂 we both laughed.
In those first few months after my marriage ended I put 1000% of my energy into taking care of myself. This meant Emotional fitness. I remember reading somewhere that 80% of what you feel is through your body, your physiology, and that only 20% was through your thoughts. I was amazed by this, and knew it was true.
Everything we feel is a result of how we use our body. Even the most minute changes in facial expression or gestures will change the way you feel in your body. Try this: relax your facial muscles, slow your breathing down, slump your shoulders, have your eyes look down and to the left, do this slowly and make sure your body, facial expression and breathing mimics that of a depressed person. Now stand up! Shoulders back eyes up to the ceiling, Force a big silly cheesy grin and make sure your body is as rigid as an army officer’s salute. Intensify this by adding sound, and outrageous explosive sound, the movement of air through your chest, throat and mouth will change the way you feel even more intensively.
Every emotion you ever feel has a specific Physiology linked to it. Once you recognise how you use your body to access certain emotions, you can return to those emotions or avoid them.
The challenge is that most of us have formed habits we resist to change even if they make us feel miserable. We revert to these habits of physiology automatically not realising how much influence they have over our emotions.
There is so much more to be said about this, but this is a blog, and my goal is to be short and impactful. I hope I have added value and insight as to how you can to consciously shape your emotions and experience more of what you want and less of what you don’t.
Stay tuned as I continue with you the fundamentals of transformation.
As always lots of love
Wendy Xxxx