A Coaching Power Tool created by Donna Willis
(Self Awareness/Emotional Intelligence Coach, UNITED STATES)
Our very existence is conceived from the very first act of pleasure experienced through the connecting of two people. We are then birthed into our own breath and individual being through an experience of pain – for someone.
The scientific world can confirm today that a child in the womb knows the experience of pleasure or comfort – as we have seen a fetus sucking its thumb in the womb. A child sucks their thumb because it is the first survival technique they will need when that first breath of individuality is taken – they must want to eat and find pleasure in eating. Or they die.
We are born pleasure seekers from birth all shrouded in the most contrasting experience of not any one of us being free from knowing pain.
- How does pain define your reality?
- What is pleasure for you?
- What is pain?
- Can pleasure be born from pain?
- Are some pleasures birthing pain?
We all fantasize about a world void of pain, but what service does pain provide?
Pain is the great contrast between what we want and what we have. What we are experiencing and what we desire to experience. It defines what can harm us and what can serve us. Pain has a great function in our lives as a master defining reaction, paradigm and evaluator.
We experience pain when our lives do not align with the pleasure we desire. Pain is the yearning for something different, something secure when we are insecure. Does pain in this moment motivate us or paralyzes us? It can do both. How can we know what pain is trying to tell us?
How can pain be an indicator to what we really want?
- When we are in pain – we open up to being vulnerable to that pain whether we like it or not. Whether we choose to be with the pain or run from the pain.
- We sit in discomfort and become very familiar with the “feeling” of that discomfort.
- It motivates us to other emotions such as: anger, revenge, bitterness, helplessness resolve, resolution, and resilience.
- It motivates us to see ourselves in a situation with intense clarity. It can force us to see the “who” we really are.
- It causes us to ask “Why?” – Why me, how come, why now?
Pain brings us to a state of reaching for pleasure that seems beyond our reach at the moment of pain – BUT it gives us a direction – a desire – to feel “good” again.
The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.– Aristotle –
So how can we coach someone to recognize how pain has served them in their lives? How can one begin to see that the hurt of yesterday has shaped their tomorrow?
By becoming familiar with the opposite feeling of pain which is pleasure or feeling good we learn a lot about ourselves, our desires and our yearnings.
