Growing up, “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger” was a common motto in our family. On the surface, this saying has a motivating and inspiring quality to it. But, dig a little deeper, and it also has a dangerous double-meaning.

Whenever life got tough, my family willingly accepted any challenge. When life got even tougher, we kept quiet and pushed through it. We didn’t talk much about our feelings, and working harder was the chosen antidote for almost anything that might ail you.

I carried this motto around with me for years. It’s likely what made me such a persistent and goal-driven person. It’s also, undoubtedly, part of what made me an injury-prone distance runner for the better part of two decades.

Determined to face every challenge, I ran through several significant injuries over the years and caused new injuries in the process by over-training. Eventually, it got the better of me.

Subscribing to the wrong mantra spelled trouble.

In 2010, I ran a half-marathon with a herniated disc and seriously strained my iliotibial band due to the modified gait I’d adopted to compensate for my pain. Two weeks later, I ran another half-marathon and barely made it to the finish line. Another two weeks later, I ran two races–back to back–in a twenty-four hour window and lost the feeling in my lower legs for a couple of days. A month after that, while doing chores around the house, my back went into a spasm that left me unable to move or even call for help for several hours.

As I laid face down on my living room floor in pain, I finally realized how the message I was using to drive myself was simultaneously undermining everything that I wanted. I decided it was time to make a change.

In our lives, like in our bodies, pain is an indicator that there’s something going on that we should pay attention to.

Sometimes that pain is a function of growth and not necessarily harmful–when handled properly. But it’s never meant to be the throwing down of the gauntlet and an invitation for self-abuse. It’s never something that we should try to cover up, ignore, or run from.

My mantra had done more than motivate me to accomplish challenges. It also taught me to bury my feelings and hide my hurting because toughing things out meant that I was strong, and anything less meant that I was weak.

But in life, there are moments when we just need to take a seat on the curb for a bit and acknowledge that what we’re going through is really hard.

Sometimes, what doesn’t kill us doesn’t make us stronger. @RichertCoaching (Click to Tweet!)

Sometimes it just knocks us down and hurts like hell. Sometimes, we are broken. It’s appropriate and, yes, HEALTHY to feel those struggles.

When we try to numb out our hurting–be it through denial, medication, various forms of addiction, or sheer willpower–we find ourselves in the midst of even more struggle in life. Putting on armor to avoid any possibility of emotional exposure never makes us feel better for very long. This behavior launches us into a vicious cycle that can spiral out of control in little time and damage the very roots of life’s joys.

Unless you never strive for anything in your life, struggle and hurt is simply unavoidable.

And, anyway, developing strength in life is not about avoiding or covering up pain. It’s about what we do with our pain. Pain is energy, and energy cannot be created nor destroyed–only transformed.

If you do not transform your hurting, it will transform you and, often, those around you.

Pain that has been ignored has the power to both eat you alive, and be manifested into toxic packages of projectile blame, anger and hate that pollute the world around you.

I think it’s time for us, as a community, to stop hiding hurt and running from struggle because we think it makes us look stronger. Instead of labeling our feelings as “good” or “bad”, let’s embrace that all of our emotions are valid and exist for a reason. Let’s start celebrating those who have the courage to ask for help instead of pitying them, or worse, shaming them for not toughing it out alone.

After all, connection, love and belonging are essential to the core of humanity.

It doesn’t make you weak to face your struggles and acknowledge hurts. It makes you human.

And there is nothing more courageous than that.

Your turn: How do you find the courage to face life’s struggles? What mantra or affirmation lifts you up when things get tough?

Kristi Richert is a professional coach and consultant loving life and crushing her goals (with better mantras every day!) in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Get to know her at www.RichertCoaching.com and download her free Get Going Toolkit—a workbook to help you make the life of your dreams into a reality. Follow on Facebook and Twitter to stay connected.

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