Here is a process you can use to change a challenging experience from the past from a source of pain into a source of growth.
Take a moment to revisit the experience and concentrate on a specific feeling it evokes. It could be anxiety — the tension or unease from a perceived threat. Maybe it’s sadness — a heaviness or sorrow weighing on your mind. You might feel anger — a sense of resentment or irritation toward a situation or a certain person. Perhaps it’s guilt — the feeling of responsibility for something that went wrong. Or maybe it’s disappointment — the letdown when expectations are not met. Whichever emotion you notice, allow yourself to feel it fully for ten seconds.
Imagine you’re standing in front of the stage at a rock concert, close enough to touch the performers. You don’t just hear the music; you feel it reverberating through every bone in your body. The pounding bass echoes in your chest as the scent of smoke and sweat mingles in the air around you. Strobe lights flash intensely, painting the crowd in rapid, fleeting bursts of color.
This rock concert is a metaphor for your challenging experience — intense, overwhelming, and transformative. Don’t engage with any words or thoughts. Just surrender to the raw sensation of the moment, letting it wash over you and carry you away on a tide of pure emotion.
Now imagine you’re in a helicopter above the concert. With binoculars, you zoom in and see yourself immersed deeply in the rock concert, immersed in that painful experience. But when you take away the binoculars, you see everyone else at the concert. You can see the band, the lights, and thousands of people. You become a witness to the experience. Instead of being swept up by the emotion, you sit back in your seat and relax behind it, looking at the scene from a distance.
You stay with it. You don’t comment. You simply observe it. You see it in its entirety, and then… you let it go. The helicopter departs from the scene. You look back toward the concert as it gets smaller and smaller and then disappears.
You are no longer there. The concert is now in the past. You are here in the present. It’s a prior experience. It’s not you. And as you let it go:
And you notice that you now feel a little bit lighter.
Look at the fragments of your experience. Were they broken, chipped, shattered? Take a breath. Imagine you’re a kintsugi master, picking up the pieces of this experience. As you allow gold to flow through the cracks, what was once pain is now transformed into beauty.
The experience is still part of you, but it no longer defines you. It transforms into something beautiful and strong that will guide you in the next stage of your journey. The transformation not only enriches your life, but by letting go of the past, you are able to make space for the future. With a lighter load, you are much better positioned to discover the work that you are meant to do.
This article is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Choose Your Work
Dan Dobos writes about decision making, personal growth, human potential, fulfillment and helping people choose the work that they are meant to do. He is the author of Choose Your Work.