Going through painful experiences and events is part of the course for everyone, no matter how rich or successful we are. Sooner or later, we all get our hardships to deal with.
You must turn your wounds into wisdom to prevent future pain and biases, and to balance out your life so you can maintain your mental sanity.
Let me explain why, and how to do this.
Why do you need to turn your wounds into wisdom?
Healing your wounds prevents future pain
You should heal your wounds because that stops future distress.
Either because unresolved issues have a tendency to resurface somewhere down the road at an increased intensity and frequency, or because they keep ruining your life due to not resolving the issue.
That’s why you should make it a point to recover from your troubles. You don’t want to drag all that baggage with you for your own sake, but also in the interest of your future relationships with others.
It keeps you from being biased in the future
You might become biased because you were wounded so badly that you created a variety of unhealthy and incorrect coping mechanisms.
That’s why people typically project their bigotry and prejudices on others because they’re still hurting by something that happened to them in the past.
But that problem gets resolved when we create harmony in our lives again. Of course, being harmed isn’t the only thing that can lead to intolerance. Phenomenons such as groupthink can still occur and cause us to become biased.
To balance your life
Your wounds can create anxiety and uneasiness, especially when the suffering is prolonged.
That can be the case due to the issue being extremely severe. After all, we refuse to fix what’s bothering us, or perhaps we refrain from resolving the difficulty because we don’t know how to cope in the right manner.
Your life should be fairly proportional. Negative experiences are part of the course, but they should be equalized with their fair share of enjoyable moments too. Otherwise, the only things going on in your existence will be suffering and misery.
To maintain your sanity
Being overly stressed because of emotional pain can cause us to lose our sanity by degrading our mental state. That’s particularly true when that tension becomes chronic.
A good rule of thumb is to try and fix the things that are under our voluntary control while trying to cope with the rest we can’t do anything about.
Even better is letting the circumstances we can’t change rest entirely. Because every amount of effort and energy that goes towards that cause is effectively wasted energy.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How to turn your wounds into wisdom
Recognize your pain
Before you can turn wounds into wisdom, you must first recognize that you are hurting.
That’s typically not difficult, seeing as we tend to feel pain much more intensely than we do pleasure. In return, it’s only logical that a lot of our actions are aimed at avoiding painful experiences rather than chasing joy.
That means that we’re most likely going to be conscious of our pain when something agonizing happens to us.
Admit to yourself that you’re in emotional pain
Being able to admit to yourself that you’re suffering is probably much harder than recognizing when you’re going through a rough patch in your life.
That’s because we like to think of ourselves as being better and stronger than we truly are. We’re prone to portraying ourselves as being superior as we are in reality, and our ego tries hard to protect that image that we have created of ourselves.
However, admitting that something’s wrong is required before we can make the necessary changes to come back stronger and fix the issue(s) at hand. At the very least, it’ll help us to cope better with our difficulties.
Accept your wounds
Accepting your wounds is necessary before being able to move forward. You can’t heal and grow as a person if you’re unable to deal with the fact that you were wounded since this is a large part of admitting to yourself that you were damaged.
But denying that it ever happened won’t make the pain go away, nor does it mean that it never took place. You can try to convince yourself by deceit. But in the end, the truth always wins.
Try to remain objective by emotionally detaching yourself from the issue(s)
Remain at a healthy distance from your concerns by practicing emotional detachment from the negative events going on in your existence.
You must remain factual to deal with your difficulties rationally and to be capable of employing common sense. This is much harder to do when we’re personally involved.
Yet, what we can learn is to look at the objective truth and evidence instead of making decisions that are based solely on our personal feelings.
Let go of the past and look towards the present and future
To grow and to emerge as a new, improved version of ourselves, we must learn to let go of the past.
That’s easier said than done, especially when dealing with a grieving process if we went through a traumatic experience.
We have to come to terms with the harsh reality that things might never be the same, no matter how hard we try to fix things.
Yet, that doesn’t mean all is lost. What we lose in one particular area, we can make up by enriching our lives in another region. That’s because humans are pliable and inherently capable of adapting to their ever-changing environment.
View pain as a challenge to overcome
We can view hardships as challenges to overcome, or as devastating problems that are ruining your happiness.
Seeing these events as challenges is a much healthier way of phrasing these difficulties, which will affect how we deal with these issues.
Life is just a series of games we play. And we must learn to cope with our troubles to keep moving forward.
Remain positive
Just because you’re going through a rough patch in your life doesn’t mean that things will never get better again, even though you might think that your situation will remain hopeless at the moment.
There are always positive experiences to be gained, even from occasions we deem to be unfavorable. But, you must be willing to see them. And you can’t perceive them if you’re not willing to look for them because you’re only looking at the negatives in your existence.
Ask yourself positive questions
Closely related to the previous point is asking yourself positive questions.
Rephrasing negative questions and beliefs into more honest, realistic ones is a technique employed in cognitive behavioral therapy. But it’s also effective to deal with pain positively.
Refrain from engaging in doom thinking, and ask yourself optimistic inquiries that make you look forward to the future by keeping you hopeful that you can turn your life around for the better.
Keep moving forward, no matter how hard and small the steps might seem
It’s hard to keep moving forward when all the cards seem stacked against you. Yet, tough times reveal our true character since we’re tested to the limit.
Things will improve again. However, don’t simply stay idle and expect things to get better by default. You have to put in the time and energy to change things for the better.
Eventually, these difficult times will pass as well. And hopefully, we’ve dealt with our concerns so that we come out stronger on the other side.
Remain calm
You can’t make good, well-thought-out decisions if you’re overly anxious, or even worse, fearful.
That’s because fear is a bad counselor, and so you should never make choices out of dread or impulsive desires.
Take your time to ponder before making a decision. Very rarely do we need to make a choice instantly. It’s better to take some extra time to be reflective and to formulate the right plan of action.
Stay hopeful
Hope is one of the essentials to take action. We need to believe that we can influence our lives. The other crucial part of taking action is possessing enough concern so that we have an incentive to change things.
Hope brings life, and that’s certainly true. I knew that I needed to remain hopeful in my darkest moments to stay sane, and that I had to believe that there was still a chance to turn things around.
Don’t care too much what other people think of you
You’re not going to be able to live your life the way you want to if you’re constantly pondering and busy caring what others are thinking of you.
Let’s take a look at this rationally. It’s just impossible to please everyone, even if you want to. Some folks would dislike you for the simple fact that you’re trying to pleasure everyone instead of just being yourself.
You’ll never become happy if you don’t live life the way you want to. That’s why you should search for, and follow your unique path to become content, and successful at whatever you desire.
Know that you’re not alone in your struggle
Another thing that can get you through many tough times is simply knowing that you’re not alone in your struggle and that many people are experiencing the same thing.
Will this solve your suffering? No. But it can help to ease your pain just by knowing that all of us are enduring challenging situations.
But hard times create tough men. If we continue going forward instead of breaking and quitting, that is.
Take action
All the talk in the world is useless without actually taking the action that’s needed to change things.
Sure, you need to take the time to think things through and formulate an actual plan that can work. But we need to put it into practice to get a chance at improving things.
It doesn’t have to be perfect from the get-go. If we do most things reasonably well, then that will undoubtedly lead to betterment.
Analyze what went well, and what can still improve
After taking action, you should analyze what went according to plan, what can be improved, and what needs to be changed or cut out entirely.
Emotional pain isn’t something that’s easily fixed, nor is it something that we’re always in tune with. Studying our situation to improve allows us to become more efficient, and to achieve better results.
Embrace the new, transformed, and stronger you
And finally, embrace the new, stronger you. You have put in the required struggle and energy to reap the fruits of your hard labor if you applied the previous steps.
You might have lost certain things along the way that you couldn’t fix. But people aren’t stationary, and life is ever-changing, which means we have to continue adapting if we wish to thrive.
We should celebrate that we survived that hard period of our lives and that we have the courage and perseverance to keep pushing forward instead of resigning.
That’s true strength, and it isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. Many people have lost their will to live and halted in the process of trying to fix their wounds. Especially when that pain felt too intense, and/or too many bad events happened at the same time, leading to disaster.
What does “turn your wounds into wisdom” mean?
The quote, “Turn your wounds into wisdom” is credited to Oprah Winfrey.
It means that we can use our painful and negative experiences to become wiser to prevent making the same mistake twice.
That damage can also make us stronger when we push through these challenges, and grow as a result of healing from our trauma.
This knowledge can also teach us how to prevent discomfort in the future, and how to cope with hurtful events better should they occur once more.
We can use this newfound understanding to aid not only ourselves, but others who are going through similar struggles as well. That’s because going through difficult times gives us an incentive to learn because a lot of our behavior is aimed at preventing pain, rather than simply chasing pleasure.
Conclusion
Healing is a process, and that means that it’s an ongoing procedure instead of a single event.
Yet, it’s necessary to flourish in the future and to prevent future pain. Your current weaknesses can become your greatest strength in the time to come if you decide to solve them!