Let’s start by visualizing you’re giving a presentation to an audience at work. You ask the audience the following questions:
- How many of you have experienced pain in your lives? What I mean by pain is, have you ever had an upsetting thought or feeling? If so, raise your hand. What do your coworkers do? What do you do?
- How many of you have ever struggled with or gotten caught up in that pain? If so, raise your hand. What do your coworkers do? What do you do?
- How many of you would like to struggle less with it? If so, raise your hand. What do your coworkers do? What do you do?
- How many of you would like to live with more purpose and vitality? If so, raise your hand. What do your coworkers do? What do you do?
Look at how you think your colleagues responded. How did you react? Whether in a room filled with five or one hundred people, you would have probably noticed everyone raising their hands if they were honest with themselves. We’re all in this together.
Perhaps you also noticed that the above words used were ‘struggle less’ and not ‘eliminate pain.’ Your education here will arm you with a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels. It will bring you through an experience, inviting you to clean your window so you can see your stuff. What you’ll probably discover, as many people do, is that pain is a normal part of being human. It’s not something to avoid, get rid of, or escape from. It’s worth having because there are usually things you care about on its flip side.
During your education, you’ll work on developing psychological flexibility through experiential learning. It involves learning by doing, making mistakes, and figuring things out as you go. An effective way to learn something is to try it out, see how it works, and practice to improve. Like riding that first bicycle, the more you do it, the better you get at it. Another excellent outcome is that you tend to feel better. I remember teaching my son to ride his first bike. It involved giving him just a few directions. I asked him to sit on the seat, hold the handlebars, put his feet on the pedals, stay relaxed, feel how the bike leans left and right, stay upright, and pedal to keep moving.
My son’s bike initially had training wheels to help him balance the bike while riding. Despite the training wheels, he tipped over, fell, and hit the ground because he was stiff and scared. He scraped his knees and hands, bruised his elbows, and cried, but he got back on the bike to ride because it was important to him.
Eventually, I took the training wheels off as my son got better at balancing the bike with practice. He learned to notice when he was leaning left or right and how to adjust himself to stay upright. He rode faster and faster. Sometimes, he jumped off curbs and rode through potholes because they stood in the way of where he wanted to go. He still fell sometimes, suffered an injury, and cried a little, but he got back on his bike and rode.
Learning by doing takes practice and might sometimes feel confusing. So don’t expect smooth riding. Take the words said lightly, and let your experience guide you.
Traveling in a direction you value might look simple. However, it might bring up some painful thoughts and feelings along the way. You might think about them, take a detour by trying to ride around them, or even get lost sometimes. Noticing what’s going on, opening up, and staying with painful thoughts and feelings are key things you’ll learn and practice because doing what’s important is sometimes painful. It can create a sense of vulnerability because caring about things reveals what hurts you. So, you’ll learn and practice skills to ride on any bumpy roads you experience along the way during the education. There are also some resources available for you to investigate anytime.
Taking a step back, have you been caught up in fighting with pain? Have you knocked it out permanently yet? Consider letting go of the fight. If you haven’t noticed yet, it’s a losing battle in the long run, despite how natural it might feel in the short term. Fighting can keep you busy growing and pissing off the very pain monsters you’ve been trying to destroy over and over again. So, in the presence of pain, you’ll learn to take action guided by your values instead. Who are you fighting with anyway?
Doing something new and different in the education might feel awkward and silly sometimes. Doing what it takes to live with more purpose and vitality while having pain might lead your mind to tell you a few things during the education. It might say, “Ignore it. There’s nothing new here for me to learn” because you already know it. It might even say, “I need to change this a bit,” so that it feels better to you. Instead, consider keeping a beginner’s mind. Be open to experiencing what there is to experience. If you think you already know it, there’s probably little the education here will offer you.
References
- Gallo, F. J. (2017). Bouncing back from trauma: The essential step-by-step-guide for police readiness. North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.