How would you answer the question, “Is pain good for you?”
Don’t worry, it’s not a trick question. Let’s say you put your hand on a hot stove. You’d remove it quickly once you felt the pain. If you didn’t feel pain, you might leave your hand there burning it to the bone.
So, yes, feeling pain is good for you, but for how long should you feel it? Still using the hot stove analogy, probably only a moment.
When something has gone wrong in your life, it’s good to feel the negative emotions that come such as stress, anger, and frustration. When it becomes damaging is if you stay in the pain too long.
If your team is not working together to complete a project or if you’re struggling to communicate with your spouse or children, it’s okay to feel negative emotions. If you don’t feel any of those emotions, you’re likely to keep doing what you’re doing, and a bad situation can get worse.
It’s okay to be in the moment of negative emotion and use it as a wake-up for something that needs your attention. However, if you stay in negative emotion, your brain becomes tunnel-visioned and can spiral down a deep unhealthy path creating a vortex of negativity for you and the people around you.
Your brain can sabotage you!
Building up your mental fitness can train your mind to shift out of sabotage mode into a clear-headed, laser-focused mindset.
I have been sabotaged by my self-judging thoughts about my habits, parenting, business decisions….you name it. Once I was introduced to mental fitness and benefited from the exercises, I have learned to recognize those negative emotions and shift into a positive mindset.
If you’ve been sabotaged by negative emotions or feel stuck in a situation for too long, ask yourself:
What is the wake-up that I need to have from this?
What is the new opportunity that I now have that I didn’t have before?
Is there a gift that I’ve been given? This one can be difficult to see if you’ve been sabotaged but try to find at least one.