"What if growing pains didn't end in your teens?"
"What if growing pains didn't end in your teens?"
What if they kept going so you could keep growing?
Dear You,
Today, I’m thrilled to share with you this excerpt from my friend Emma Seppala’s latest book, Sovereign: Reclaim Your Freedom, Energy and Power in a Time of Distraction, Uncertainty, and Chaos. Emma is a bestselling author, Yale lecturer, keynote speaker - and extraordinary human. A psychologist and research scientist by training, her expertise is the science of happiness, emotional intelligence, and social connection.
If you’ve ever wondered what emotional pain could possibly be good for — that’s Emma’s question, too.
Here’s Emma:
“After graduating from college, I lived in China for two years. There, I encountered profound wisdom from people who had been through hell and back and remained sovereign: Wise, happy & thriving.
What was their secret?
One particular gentleman had almost starved to death (there was general famine) and had lost his wife to those tragic times. He taught me a lot about resilience.
There is a Chinese expression
chi ku shi fu
which means eating bitterness (i.e., hardship) is good fortune.
Good fortune, i.e. it’s a good thing. That’s not how we tend to think in the West.
We believe the expression “no pain, no gain” applies only to exercise and diet.
It couldn’t possibly be true about our emotional pain: our anxiety, fear, insecurity, anger, frustration, loneliness, general malaise, midlife crisis, darkest thoughts, languishing, or anxiety.
Nope.
When it comes to those forms of pain, we do everything possible not to feel:
Shop or gamble, drink or binge, watch movies or porn, scroll or smoke, overwork or overexercise, over-indulge or punish ourselves.
This can look industrious (“I work 12-hour days”) or gritty (“I do an Ironman a month!”),or even saintly (“I volunteer 30 hours a week!”) . . . but it’s all the same thing:
Numbing.
And it keeps us bound.
Sadly, the pain is still there waiting for us. Only now we’re exhausted, beaten up by the side effects of our drug of choice, and, sadly, in worse shape to face it than when we started.
A sovereign approach looks different:
What if growing pains didn’t end in your teens?
What if they kept going so you could keep growing?
What if emotional pain was not useless suffering?
What if pain were your friend?
The friend who matures you, makes you stronger, fiercer, and wiser.
The friend that loves you so much they will break your heart so it can grow larger.
The friend that lures you into the darkest areas so you can see your own light shine brighter.
The friend that truly sees the beauty, strength, and magnificent potential you are.
And who will go to any length to help you birth your truest, bravest, boldest self?
Sovereign.
Looking back on your own life in this light, from what life experiences have your greatest lessons emerged?
Inevitably it’s the divorces, deaths, sudden unemployment, health issues, cheating partners, abusive relationships, or financial difficulties. It is those hard, painful, heartbreaking, and excruciating times that have also brought forth your best self.
They have invoked resilience in you because you had no choice.
They brought forth your courage because you had to make it through.
They cultivated forbearance and steadfastness in you because you felt like you were dying, but you had to keep going.
There were tears and moments spent writhing on the floor, but you got up, had breakfast, and went to work anyway.
You witnessed the warrior within yourself.
The valor.
And you carried on.
Your hair grayed, but you grew.
Post-traumatic growth is real. The lotus really does grow from the mud. When we go through hard times, it brings about forbearance and enormous strength. It brings about wisdom because we’ve seen suffering. We no longer take small things for granted.
Most of all, post-traumatic growth leads to compassion. Because you’ve seen and experienced pain, your heart has stretched. Its capacity for love is greater, and its desire to help others is stronger.
Always remember that you are sovereign.
You’re stronger than you know.”
~~~~~~
This was an excerpt from my extraordinary friend Emma Seppälä, a bestselling author, psychologist and Yale University research scientist and lecturer. You can order her book, SOVEREIGN, here! Or check out her book website and IG for more.
Have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll see you here again, this week.
xo Susan
Life is a paradox and pain is a teacher...Transcendence never stop growing... It is the pain, challenges, that make the beauty so beautiful to are tearful eyes.... May a open heart grow for a lifetime and beyond . Make me think of the trees, mighty ponderosas some with scars, broken branches, maybe there not a straight as the one next to it but continue to grow they do for they search for transcendence, wisdom amidst the ocean skies , grounded in their root they bring back stories to share to us amongst this earth for wisdom seeker they are amidst the ever changing storms they continue to grow in search of it...
I love this.
Years ago, I stumbled across an online lecture by James Gordon, MD on post-traumatic growth. It was extraordinary in its perspective on the expansion of your heart space after grieving for so long. It seems they are both sides of the same coin. You learn to sit with the discomfort until it passes like the weather allowing yourself to grieve the person you used to be. David Kessler is another great author that guides people through difficult emotions. Trauma changes you. Processing these deeply to integrate and emerge as a new “you” can take years…I know it did for me! There was a before-Kate and after-Kate from trauma at ages 14-17. I am 39 and I am still learning how to navigate and reconcile this.