When you’re feeling out of your soul zone and something crap is happening…accept that it’s happening. I know. Believe me, I know. This may sound super flaky and totally impossible. And yet…this counsel is at the heart of most Eastern mysticism. Don’t deny what’s occurring.

The power to change what’s happening comes from accepting it first. @DanielleLaPorte (Click to Tweet!)

You can rant if you need to. This blows. I can’t believe this is happening again. F-ckity f-ck f-ck. I’m in pain. I’m humiliated. Discouraged. This hurts.

“Being” with the pain is the opposite of ignoring it when something bothers you. It means that instead of changing the subject, or eating a whole bag of chips, or justifying someone’s bad behaviour (including your own) — or glossing over your pain with fake gratitude — you take a minute (or a morning, or a solo weekend) to feel into how much it really sucks.

This isn’t wallowing. This is curiosity, compassion and respect. (Wallowing is when you add drama to it, and stretch it out so you don’t have to get over it. Sometimes, wallowing is just what you need to do — but healthy wallowing needs to be practiced sparingly.)

So…there you are and you’re being with the pain, and you’re respecting yourself. And then, because you’re the Creator of (Most of) Your Reality, you get to switch gears. Just up-shift one gear and say this to yourself: “I’m really looking forward to feeling . . .”  A very simple, creative act.  You just signaled to your psyche that you want something different and you believe in it’s inevitability.

I’m really looking forward to feeling…

better, calmer, sexier, clearer, complete, healed, positive, enthusiastic, loving, back on top, centered, lighter…

and I know it’s possible…inevitable, in fact.

We can’t instantly LEAP from pain to happiness. We can get from pain to happiness really quickly, but there are steps, a healing sequence.

Respect yourself by looking at your pain.

Feel what it feels like.

Look forward to change.

And the healing has begun.

All Love,

Danielle LaPorte is the creator of The Desire Map: A Guide To Creating Goals With Soul — the book that turned into a day planner system, a top iTunes app, and an international workshop program. A Desire Map workshop happens every weekend somewhere in the world. Author of The Fire Starter Sessions and the wildly popular #Truthbomb series, Danielle is also the co-creator of Your Big Beautiful Book Plan and co-host of the Beautiful Writer’s Group podcast.

Entrepreneur Magazine calls her “equal parts poet and entrepreneurial badass…edgy, contrarian…loving and inspired.” A speaker, poet, former business strategist and Washington-DC think tank exec, she writes weekly at DanielleLaPorte.com, where over four million visitors have gone for her straight-up advice — a site that’s been deemed “the best place online for kick-ass spirituality,” and was named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Women” by Forbes. The Huffington Post named her Twitter feed as one of the “12 of Wisest Twitter Accounts Worth Following.” You can find her @daniellelaporte just about everywhere.