You Get to Choose Your Life’s Mission(s)

A lot of people today are spiritually sick.

Seriously, you don’t need to look very far to see immense amounts of addiction, mental health problems, division, and derisiveness amongst so much of the population today. So many people get so easily triggered and display a general lack of comfort in their own skin.

I’m not here to tell you that life is supposed to be easy because it isn’t. I feel for anybody whose in pain, even when they take it out on others. As the saying goes — hurt people hurt people.

So what’s one to do when they find themselves in this dark and endless loop of pain in their life?

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How it all begins

It’ll be helpful to explore where this sickness begins:

In many instances, as a child and adolescent, you were made to feel like you weren’t worthy of the love, belonging, and adoration that every person naturally craves.

So many people who struggle with mental health issues, depression, and anxiety get stuck in patterns that established themselves during childhood in order to protect themselves.

This can be from family patterns and intergenerational trauma that get passed down.

This can be from direct painful experiences one faces early in life.

The kid who got relentlessly bullied learned to go inward and make himself invisible to avoid further torment, thus crippling his ability to find meaningful connections later in life.

The girl who believed she was fat and not pretty developed a destructive relationship with food in order to feel in control of herself and her body.

It’s only natural when a child or an adolescent goes through a painful experience in their life to cope by over-compensating in the other direction. The problem is that these over-corrections severely limit and cause significant problems in other areas of their life.

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How to combat the sickness

You can start by asking yourself what it is that causes the most pain in your life. Pain is pain and it sucks, but you can also be open to finding the opportunity in your anguish. Pain can be a useful barometer to measure what’s meaningful to you.

So…what’s meaningful to you? What excites you? What do you feel would be a wonderful way for you to live your life? What inspires you? What angers you? And yes, what causes you pain?

The answer is on you, only you can answer it.

Once you answer those questions and you have a greater understanding of who you are, choose a mission or even multiple missions.

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What do you want your mission to be?

When I was in my late teens and early 20s, I dealt with several painful bouts of depression. I didn’t like myself, and the future often felt hopeless. Sometimes I still feel depressive symptoms come on at times, but I’ve learned how to deal with them and they’re never as severe as they once were.

During what was probably the most severe and darkest episode of depression I ever had, I confided most of all in my father, who I was very fortunate to have by my side.

We were sitting at the dinner table together, and I was blankly staring at my plate telling him about how bleak my world felt and that the pain I felt seemed insurmountable — he then told me something that I will never forget:

“Your greatest struggle can become your greatest strength”.

I might not have been able to receive it right then, but those words were exactly what I needed to hear at that moment.

Whatever your struggle is, whatever causes you pain, use it! Use that pain as a way to figure out what’s important to you and work towards it.

If you were bullied, awkward, and excluded as a child you can make it your mission to learn social skills, find meaningful relationships, and also learn to stand up for yourself.

If you come from a family where health wasn’t a priority and you feel yourself paying the price, you can make it your mission to develop a healthy and empowering relationship with food, exercise, and your body.

Most likely, you’ll have many life missions for yourself, and this is a good thing!

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Past is prologue

No matter where you come from, how much of a failure you might feel like, and how much pain and despair you might have experienced in your life, it can all change!

You will never be able to change the past — so you can either lament the past, or you can choose that you’re going to take the valuable lessons from your previous failures, hardships, and pains.

There’s no limit to what you can do and who you can become.

It’s time for you to make the choice to rise up in spite of what has happened to you or where you come from. Use that pain! It’s a more powerful instrument than you might think.

Have a mission in life and commit to working on it tirelessly.

If you at least do this, I can guarantee your life will get better.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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