Mind & Meaning

“Life is happening for me”

World-class triathlete & coach Siri Lindley on how pain can serve you

Posted by: Team Tony

What if life wasn’t happening to you, but happening for you?

Pain comes in so many different forms, but we’ve all experienced it at some level, in some manifestation. But we have a choice – we can continue to dwell and live in that negative emotional space, or we can acknowledge the pain as a fact, and see the good that it created in our lives. Because if you are going to blame someone for the pain they caused, then you better blame them for all the good that came out of it too. If you’re going to give them credit for everything that is so messed up, then you have to give them credit for everything that is great. Because life is not so simple – it’s not binary.

Take, for instance, Tony Robbins’ mother. As he’s shared, she was violently abusive to him. But she also loved him dearly. If he’s going to blame her for the pain and suffering she caused, then he also must blame her for the beauty in his life. He blames her for the wonderful wife he has. He blames her for his capacity to feel and to care. He blames her for his insatiable hunger to end suffering for any human he can. If she had been the mother he had wanted, he wouldn’t be the man that he is today.

Siri Lindley, a two-time Triathlon World Champion who dominated the International Triathlon Union World Rankings, recently came to a similar state of understanding. When she attended Date with Destiny, she was mired in a story she had been telling herself for decades – a story that was predicated upon her strained relationship with her father. She told herself that she wasn’t worth it and that she wasn’t important enough for someone to fight for. And she so desperately wanted this pain to go away that she cut any idea of her father out of her life. But at Date with Destiny, she was able to break through in a way she never thought possible:

Imagine – if life wasn’t happening to you, but for you? That even the most painful periods of your life happened so you could become who you are meant to be? How does that shift in perspective change your outlook? What does it do to the stories that you have built up that very likely tear you down and hold you back?

Nothing can change the pain that you have experienced in the past. There are things that happen in life that are tragic and unfair. There are people that come into your life that hurt you. And you may see them as awful. But they are there to serve you. They are there to help you tap into the person you truly are. There are there to help you become even greater. And they are there to help you become who you were meant to be.

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