Two major forces determine the direction people take in life, and affect the decisions they make. Avoiding pain, and pursuing pleasure. Pain avoidance is primary. People will pay and invest in those things they believe will help them avoid pain.
Pain takes many forms, ranging from cosmetic such as steering away from social embarrassment, to traumatic, such as healing a terminal ailment. The more urgent and pressing, the less willing we are to put up with it any longer.
Once the pain of change exceeds the pain of staying the same SHIFT happens.
Pain often precipitates change.
When the pain of staying the same, rolling around and around the same mountains, becomes more than the pain of changing and challenging our status quo, things happen.
Ask anyone with a transformative story and they will in almost 100% of cases relate how a pivotal point was reached when change and breakthrough became a non-negotiable. Win or die, it had to happen! Even more so if the change needs to happen NOW, not some fuzzy day in the future.
The back story of most breakthroughs often tells a back-to-the-wall scenario. A painful circumstance, a disaster, a painful realization or seeming failure that catapulted the person into a no-holds-barred decision to discover a solution.
That solution then becomes something they can share with others, helping their fellow humans circumnavigate the painful pathways so they don’t have to climb the same mountains or swallow the same bitter pills to reach their special breakthrough moment.
It is easy to read the books, browse the magazines, watch the documentaries, or look at sale pages and the results others are displaying, and envy them. Most of the time, however, their pathway to WOW was two-thirds OW!
These Hero’s Journey backstories are powerful.
The overcomer becomes a guide for others on the road.
Your question today is this.
What is your hero’s journey? What pain have you traversed and risen from as victor?
It could be something dramatic, but let me free you from the thought that you have to have a radical tale to tell before you can be helpful and valuable to fellow travelers.
Here are some of my heroic wins that have translated into profitable products:
1. The pain of learning how to use the writing software, Scrivener, and then being able to show others how to in an online course I took time and effort to create.
2. The pain of not knowing how to self-publish a book, and discovering how so I could help others do the same, all the while continuing to publish my own books and rake the royalties.
3. The pain of prayerlessness and frustration in my spiritual life, and breaking through into a rich and powerful relationship with God, then sharing those keys in books and seminars.
4. The pain of now knowing how to sell products online, build websites, create landing pages, build email lists, and so on and so on…
You have what someone else is seeking!
You are the answer to the prayer some else is praying (even as you read this).
For others, it might be the pain of not knowing how to eat well, exercise, or lose weight. It could be the pain of financial illiteracy, or not knowing how to stop your puppy pooping in your neighbor’s garden.
First-world problems many of them, I know, but they are problems people are looking to fix.
How about the pain of failing marriage? Or the restoration of a broken heart and shattered self-esteem after a marriage that has already failed? The pain of bankruptcy, and the subsequent rise from the ashes?
Believe me, you have your own heroic feats that are worthy and willing to become your story, and it will be your story that sells the solutions that you bring.
Don’t discount the power of your “OW!”, and its ability to help you reach your WOW!
