My, initial, decision to become a life coach and focus on self-awareness and understanding came from my own, personal, experiences with pain and suffering.

I think, a lot of times, (and I know when I first ventured on this "path") people are under the impression that when they choose to become more spiritual or just decide to be more optimistic and healthy with themselves and about life, they believe it will end any pain or suffering that they experience. This, unfortunately, is not entirely true…yes, once you start to work on yourself from the "inside", you do realize much of our pain and suffering comes from within by how we think, feel and act; however, life will always contain just as much pain and suffering as joy and happiness. It is, merely, a fact and it happens to all of us.

The biggest problem or "issue" with pain and suffering is that our society teaches us to either deny it, entirely, or label it so that we hold onto it and believe it is who we our (an "aspect" of our personality).

Obviously, denial does not help to make any pain or suffering go away. It, actually, creates more of it because, not only, have you not acknowledged and dealt with whatever it is you are experiencing, but the denial of it creates a "snowball effect", in your life, due to the anxiety and stress that comes up from ignoring it, in the first place.

When we hold onto pain and suffering, we begin to make it a part of us. This causes us to live in a "victim" mentality (keep in mind: all of us have been victims in one way or another… this is, just, a part of our individual and inner growth). Living in this way makes us more "dependent" on outside influences, which, in turn, keeps us from becoming aware and enjoying real liberation. This, too, creates more pain and suffering because it keeps us in misery and depression.

When you become more aware of yourself and life, in general, and you experience any type of suffering (mental, physical or emotional pain), you need to go "deep" within to find the "root" of the suffering. It sometimes takes a while (weeks, months&even; years) but once you "find the source", you become more enlightened and you begin to "transform" into a whole, healthy and authentic individual.

Pain and suffering will always be a part of everyone's life; however, when you feel "enough is enough" and you can no longer deny and/or live with so much pain and suffering, you can learn how to acknowledge it, deal with it, "cure" it and "expand" from it.

It is up to us, as individuals, to decide whether to let our "suffering" hold us down or build us up. Self Realization is the key to enable any pain and suffering to be the "teacher" we need it to be, in order to, feel better.