asma's blog

My back is in absolute shambles; I forgot my charger in the car, and when I went to go outside to grab it, I slipped on the front door steps. A highly humbling experience that has left me with a sore back.

But what did I learn from this experience?

Lately I have been consuming a lot of not-so-great stuff. In terms of food, online content, and just general consumption. As a result, I slowly felt myself lose my spark, and it reignited a monkey mind. I would go to sleep with a busy mind, consumed with thoughts that fragmented my understanding of the reality I was truly experiencing. I felt disoriented, all over the place, and frankly as though there was no light at the end of a dark tunnel. In a way, it was an emotional pain that I was experiencing that kept me stuck in loops of negativity.

Then today I slipped and hurt my back, and it made me realize that pain is a very important lesson. When you are in pain, it’s difficult to focus on anything else. In your interactions with others, mention of your pain will come up. You start to research more about the pain you’re experiencing, and it slowly consumes your identity and expression for that short amount of time. However, it’s quite remarkable how distractions make your pain disappear for a short period. For example, right now, I was just super locked into writing, so I kind of forgot about how bad my back was hurting, and as a result, I perceived that it stopped hurting, but then as I’m writing this, I remember the pain again, and it reappeared.

Distractions sort of work in this odd way; they are a temporary pain reliever, but they dont really address the root issue. Kind of like taking Tylenol for a recurring headache or scrolling on your phone rather than dealing with your feelings. Like it’s making you feel okay, but there’s still some deeper reason that’s causing your headache. So how do you really deal with pain? I think by addressing the core issue. Sometimes, however, its diffucult to find out what the core issue even is, but in my experience, a relaxed mind is much more reliable at giving you that answer than a frantic one. So step one is to relax, take a breather, and let yourself think. Constantly thinking and obsessively focusing on your pain will not eradicate it; I know this because I’ve tried that. I promise it doesn’t work. What does work, though, is giving it a good, clear, relaxed think and then taking aligned action. The less you worry, the closer you are to living the life you want. Someone once told me that worrying is like a repellent to your desired outcome. Worrying is like a prayer for the thing you don’t want. If you focus on the world as a place of scarcity and lack of resources, that is the identity you will develop, and thus the reality you experience, and thus the person you become.

But if you focus on gratitude and the abundance of the universe, then that is literally the life you will have. An abundant and grateFUL life.