​

Achieve, Heal and Discover Issue #16

​

A biweekly newsletter for dreamers, builders and creators to achieve (get things done), heal (fix what’s broken) and discover (learn something new).​

Manage your pain, don’t run from it.

Our biggest battle with pain isn’t the experience of it, rather it is the avoidance of pain.

In an 1973 interview, Dr Maya Angelou highlighted 3 Possible outcomes of pain:

Here is the goal for today’s issue:

I want you to have enough self-compassion to move your pain into hope.

To do this we will look at:

4 Levels of Attention:

1. Suffering (Pain Management)
2. Perseverance (Focused Determination)
3. Character (Building Your World)
4. Hope (Rehearsing Your Why)

The last issue covered Suffering and Perseverance. Today, I’ll offer resources for Character and Hope OR you can read it all here: https://www.edvardoarcher.com/post/a-guide-to-transition-from-suffering-to-hope​

Achieve (Get things Done)

Level 3: Character (Building Your World)

Pain can significantly change your brain, body and beliefs.

It can negatively by priming maladaptive coping strategies or even posttraumatic stress disorder but it can have a massive impact for the positive as well.

Over the last 25 years, researchers have been looking into a phenomenon known as posttraumatic growth (PTG). It explains that people who endure psychological struggle following adversity can see a positive growth afterwards.

Researchers found that individuals who experienced PTG reported strengthening the following areas:

• Appreciation of life
• Relationships with others
• New possibilities in life
• Personal strength
• Spiritual change

Here is the good news, PTG happens naturally. We are all built to walk through pain and exit it with these upgrades. However, here are some practical ways to ensure you exit your pain with a stronger character.

You need people- isolation is the enemy, be with your tribe and/or therapist

You need experiences- moments are the secret- slow down enough to be captivated by the smallest sensory input, you will get grounded and on your way

You need to own and share your story with people who make you feel safe and accepted

Heal (Fix What’s Broken)

Level 4: Hope (Rehearsing Your Why)

Why does all of this matter?

You have been on a long journey. You rode the waves of pain and learned how to tolerate uncomfortability embracing the inconveniences of the little things.

You pushed through the pain that threatened to derail our identity and routines by adapting focused determination to put one foot in front of the other. Pacing yourself with rest but also keeping our eyes on your destination.

Experiencing the hurt and being surrounded by support, allowed you to strengthen your relationships, developed a greater appreciation of life and extended your sight of what is possible.

The pain is there and you are responding.

Hope is the realization that your response matters.

This is where you gain a high level view of why you do this every day. The “why” rests in the confidence you are gaining towards ourselves, it lives inside of your children, missions and lifelong devotions. You chose to manage your pain for values that build you up and will one day outlive you.

And this hope will never disappoint us.

Discover (Learn Something New)

You need pain.

The human psyche needs some level of stress in order to evolve.

In Michael Easter’s book “The Comfort Crisis,” he explains that avoiding stress is probably the wrong approach altogether.

He highlights two mental adaptations that make us impossible to please as humans:

1. Hedonic adaptation makes humans adjust and adapt to any situation, so we have to always look out for new things to be satisfied. We grow discontent with the same old, same old.
2. Prevalence-induced concept change,” a term coined by David Levari, psychologist at Harvard University. Conducting a series of studies, Levari found that instead of becoming more satisfied as we experience fewer problems, we lower our threshold for what we consider a problem.

In other words, a lack of stress makes us bored and we automatically start looking for things to make problems.

We are not trapped and tricked into negativity, rather we are built for it. We only need to focus our attention so our pain can progress into maturity which is hope.
​
I’m grateful for you!

Keep growing!

​

Edvardo Archer

​

P.S

Whenever you are ready, I created a course for you: Mood First Productivity: A System to Flow With Your Mood Into Productivity. It will help you build a system so your tasks and objectives can serve your mood and mental state. It's only 20 minutes. You can watch it along with any other course for free with your 30 day trial.

Check it out here: https://skl.sh/3QU9aNf​

If you enjoyed that, please share this newsletter with others:

​Newsletter.EdvardoArcher.com​
​

​