These pains that you feel are messengers,
Listen to them.

Rumi

“That’s going to hurt for a long time.”

“I don’t know if he’ll ever recover.”

One hears these words every year at the State wrestling tournament after a wrestler loses an important match.

Some wrestlers do recover from significant losses, and some do not.

The ones that do recover use their pain to motivate them to take action to address an area that needs fixing.

The ones that don’t recover are the ones who do not use their pain to motivate them, but rather attempt to hide, diminish, or ignore it.

Famous American Actress Cicely Tyson tells a story,

“I once ran across a young child who did not know who Dr. Martin Luther King was.

You know, when we were fighting for rights, we did not want them to go through what we did. We were trying to enable them to use their energy and talents for other things that help humanity.

And because of that, we left them nothing to fight for; they didn’t understand what it meant.”

After my High School wrestling career was over and I didn’t accomplish the goals I set out to achieve, I vowed I would never let my sons wrestle.

I never wanted them to experience the pain that I experienced from this sport.

I was wrong in my protective thinking.

Pain is invaluable to experience.

Pain is painful.

It is also necessary.

Pain motivates one to act.

Pain is the stimulus of change, improvement, and correction.

Pain is an indicator that something is not right.

Pain forces one to address a situation that needs to change and never be repeated.

Listen to your pain,

Absorb it,

Let it soak in.

Then let it motivate you to take the corrective action to eliminate its presence.

An excerpt from the book

Wrestling Rules for Life by John Passaro