Encountering Truth - pain or progress?

[goldenguru]

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990, Hazelden Foundation:

Today, I will be grateful for any awareness I encounter. I will display gratitude, peace, and dignity when life gets my attention. I will remember that it's okay to accept the temporary discomfort from awareness because I can trust that it's my Higher Power moving me forward.

For so many years I would have preferred to live as an ostrich. This quote really hit home in terms of being comfortable with facing the truth of our situation - whatever painful situation we face.

I was especially stuck by the part about accepting 'the temporary discomfort from awareness because I can trust that it's my Higher Power moving me forward'.

It is true that pain moves us forward. It makes us stronger. It makes us better people. More empathetic people.

I share this in the hope that you too can be reminded that it is OK to encounter truth - and the discomfort that it sometimes brings.

 

[KFld]

It is true that pain moves us forward. It makes us stronger.

I agree. I know pain has moved me forward and made me a much stronger person.

 

[standswithcourage]

I agree. Even though most of the time it really hurts it has made me stronger also. Thanks for the quote.

 

[Steely]

Thanks GG...........
In fact I had "an awareness encounter" just a minute ago with a response from someone to my post. It was such an ah-ha moment!
So "I will choose to display gratitude, peace, and dignity" since life got my attention. :smile:

 

[goldenguru]

If there is a Beattie newsletter I don't receive it. I found the quite highlighted in a book I read a while back.

Three times huh? When that happens to me I assume that God's got a message he's trying to make me hear - loud and clear...
:angel:

 

[ScentofCedar]

I find it helpful too to label the fear of confronting old belief systems exhilaration.

Is it true that it is our own belief systems we are challenging when we choose to change?

Whose voice is it, telling us who we are and making us afraid to try a different way of being in the world?

There are so many people willing to convince us that we are no more than we appear to be.

I think that may not be true though.

I think we become whatever we were taught our limits were.

If we can challenge those old beliefs, then we can choose, and truly change our potentials and our lives.

Those old, negative tapes telling us how we are going to lose or look foolish are insidious, and so familiar that we don't recognize them. When something goes wrong in one area of our lives, it seeps over and we lose confidence in other areas, I think.

Pain does push us toward change.

But here is the question: Is there a way to motivate ourselves toward the positive changes we can imagine, if we allow ourselves to do so, WITHOUT pain?

Comfort levels are so...comfortable.

You have given me some very nice things to think about, GG.

Barbara