The Pain to Purpose Formula

The call ends, and I shut my laptop just enough to lean forward and rest my head on the steering wheel. My mouth hangs open, unable to comprehend what just happened. I have been fired.

I go inside the Arby's I am parked in front of to buy lunch and, without thinking, pull out my company card. I insert the chip. "Card declined," the machine reads. I blush with embarrassment, remembering the HR rep just told me my card would no longer work. This is the first drop in an ocean of embarrassment, shame, and humiliation I will feel over the next few months.

I didn't do anything wrong, but as people find out something happened, they inevitably call, and the shame reappears. Lying in bed at night, sentences of self-doubt run through my mind.

"You can't even keep an entry-level sales job."

"You'll have to tell every future boss you got fired."

Years later, after establishing myself in a new career, finding success as an entrepreneur, and earning more financially than I ever did in that job, I still bury my story. Every time it resurfaces, so do the shame, humiliation, and embarrassment.

There has to be a reason this happened, some good that can come from it. Slowly, over time, it becomes easier to talk about. It takes intentional reflection and the help of others to make the pain that event caused purposeful. Looking back, I realize now that I am using a specific formula to find meaning in a challenging life experience.

That formula looks like this:

Pain × Time (Perspective + Agency) = Meaning

Pain

Something traumatic occurs in our life. We lose a job, a relationship ends, or we bomb a test. Disappointment, failure, rejection, loss, and betrayal are simply part of life.

Time

Most of us have heard that time heals all things, but that is not necessarily true. The pain may lessen over time, but to find meaning we must be intentional with the time that is passing.

First, we must widen our perspective. Perspective includes distance, maturity, advice, conversations, and seeing the event from angles we could not access in the moment. Often, that means sharing the story of our pain with someone we trust.

If perspective allows us to see the situation differently, agency allows us to act. Agency is the belief that your decisions and actions can influence your life, even when you cannot control the circumstances. Adding agency to perspective allows us to move forward and use the experience to create positive outcomes in our lives.

Meaning

When pain meets time, and that time is spent widening perspective and reclaiming agency, it nearly always yields meaning. When we find meaning, we can then help others do the same.

Since getting fired from my role, I have had multiple conversations with friends who are experiencing the same thing. Each time, my goal is simple, help widen their perspective so they spend less time in pain and more time in meaning.

Your pain has a purpose waiting to be uncovered, and you get to choose what it becomes.

Fact

Psychologists note that perspective-shifting is one of the strongest predictors of resilience after a setback.

Action

Identify the sentence of self-doubt that plays in your mind, and rewrite it into a sentence of truth.

Question

Whose perspective might you need to find meaning in your pain?

Quote

“In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds meaning.” - Viktor Frankl