Nothing is wasted in this life, unless we forget that
we have the ability to turn pain into power.

Did you live through economic uncertainty or even poverty as a child?

Do you know that the anxiety you dealt with and, possibly, even the hunger you experienced, allows you to empathize with the anxieties and hungers of others—whether financial, or otherwise?

Do you know that having survived what you lived through means you are a symbol that others can?

Do you know that you have been made an ambassador of healing with the power to comfort and inspire others because you know what they are going through?

There are some prerequisites to being able to use
your pain in this powerful way, of course.

First, you can’t be on the run from your reality.

You have to be willing to turn and face and explore the painful parts of your own story—often from much earlier in your life—in order to harness them and deploy them, to the good. Otherwise, you will go to great lengths to pretend they don’t exist, and that pretending could have the opposite effect from turning your pain into power. If you are on the run from your own truth, after all, you risk unconsciously suggesting that others should run from theirs, too.

Second, you have to be willing to take a chance that
your overtures toward others might be rejected.

Not everyone is ready to take the hand held out to them, even when it is offered in an effort to steady the other person. Sometimes, the person with signs of depression who you share your history of depression with will turn away. Sometimes, the entrepreneur who is starting out won’t be willing to accept your sage wisdom about “capital being precious,” after you have had the experience of wasting yours. There are people who are ready to receive gifts and others who are not. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth the effort to try to reach each and every one of them.

Here’s what I can promise: If you do your part of the Pain-2-Power work, then not only will you be made stronger, but you will, indeed, find others who can benefit from your pain and also be made stronger. There is not one of us whose complex life story will be mined only to the benefit of that individual. Not even one.