How the Gift of Emotional Pain Can Help You Find Your Purpose

Pain can be the best teacher you’ll ever have. You can be so set on your life going a certain way when deep down, you know you want something different — something more.

You’re committed to that better-known path. It’s comfortable — if it weren’t, it’d be easy to change. You’re pigeonholed as the person with THAT job or THAT relationship. And you’re around 60% happy, so you go along with it.

It’ll take a seismic shift to get you to snap out of your trance, and that’s when pain can be your best friend.

When you’re on the wrong path.

From age 21, I was desperate to become a Police Officer. At first, I even signed up as a volunteer— I spent six months working nights at weekends for free. All that chaos and danger, and I loved it.

Within six months of being a fully-fledged officer, I began suffering from PTSD. It was a sign that this job wasn’t right for me, but I ignored it.

For five years, I pushed my suffering to the back of my mind and carried on while experiencing repeated trauma from multiple incidents. Something had to give.

Finally, my life imploded. My PTSD became so bad I was forced into medical retirement aged 27 and told I was 100% disabled for the rest of my life. Pain had played its trump card.

Pain breaks you down to your core.

I sat in a Psychiatrists office, crying uncontrollably as I relayed details of the murder of a baby. It was one of many incidents that kept me awake at night and had got so bad that I couldn’t be in the same room as small children, and hearing a baby crying would give me horrendous flashbacks.

Even then, in the forefront of my mind was the question, “Will I ever make it back to the front line as a police officer?” The Psychiatrists exact words were, “You’ll return to the police over my dead body.”

Knowing I’d never be a police officer again sent me into a spiral of depression that stole years of my life. I’d been stripped to my bare bones of everything I associated with “me.”

I went from Leon the police officer, studying for promotion, speeding around the city saving people, tackling monsters, and going where others fear to tread to…

Nothing.

Now I was Leon the slob—the man who struggled to get out of bed. I was the Leon who cried all day, got fat, and stopped caring how he looked—the Leon who had no curiosity, no interest in anything, and a gaping void inside.

I was in an impenetrable fortress, a prison of my own making. I still had the love of my family, but I was so depressed I couldn’t feel it. It was like a force that came towards me but hit an invisible brick wall.

Looking to the future, I saw emptiness, no purpose, and no hope—just a vast expanse of lying in bed crying and hating myself. My spirit had long died, and I only felt alive in the most technical sense.

How to rebuild.

The first glimmer of hope came with a change in medication. Within days, I could feel my depression lifting. It became less all-consuming and intense.

I found it hard to believe because I’d had no relief in years. For a long time, I’d wake up and do a physical assessment, checking for signs of depression hiding in my body. As I scanned head to toe, I found it less and less until one magic day…

I wasn’t depressed anymore. I’d still have miserable periods of time, but they felt more in tune with other people’s feelings when they had bad days. I could feel love again, and my energy started returning.

I had one stumbling block. I couldn’t return to the police and had no idea what to do with myself. So I began exploring.

I started following my curiosity. I learned to play Chess and Poker. I tried playing complicated video games. I began learning Japanese and reading as many books as I could.

I was finding ways to occupy myself but still hadn’t found my life’s purpose.

It’s never too late to find your purpose.

I began looking at my strengths. I had a lot of money saved up. The police had paid me a lump sum for my injury, and in all the years of depression, I’d been living with my parents and spent very little.

Until then, I’d been risk-averse and scared to take any chances, but I started learning about the stock market and investing.

First, I started day trading — buying and selling stocks and currency all within the same day based on various indicators on stock market charts. I found it mentally taxing, but I made thousands in a short space of time. My most significant success was making a thousand dollars in a couple of seconds.

I also had losses, but I was making a significant profit overall. I began looking at long-term investing, and the more relaxed, passive wealth accumulation over a long period appealed to me. So I split my money between trading and investing.

Towards the end of 2021, a friend suggested some great informational websites. One of them was Medium. On a whim, I started reading and noticed anyone could write on the platform. So I wrote my first article.

It was poorly written and dull, but it sparked something in me. I realized I could become better at writing and make money doing something creative. Nearly 200 articles later, I’ve made thousands of dollars through my writing, and I get touching messages from people saying I’ve helped them in some way.

Don’t let the pain go to waste.

Without my life imploding and losing the career I dreamed about, I’d never have had the time and space to find my real joys: writing and studying the stock market. Nothing short of an earthquake could have forced me out of my rut.

I’m not saying some supernatural force was at play, orchestrating the universe to set me on a perfect, preordained path. I’m saying pain was my greatest teacher, healer, and the best thing that ever happened to me.

I’m saying deep down, you know when you’re settling, pigeonholed, and average, and you want more for yourself. If life as you know it is wrenched from you, open your mind and start searching for better. Why didn’t things work out? What are you interested in? How can you rebuild?

Don’t get stuck in indecision. Just try a bunch of new things and see where the chips fall. When your old life is destroyed, the world is your oyster. You have nothing to lose and a chance to rebuild however you want. I found my purpose at 40 years old. There’s no age limit to being happy.

Pain is sending you a message. Are you willing to receive it?

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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