#108 - Their Pain, Your Gain

Our personal experiences and pain can be valuable for others. When we share these experiences we can help others avoid making the same mistakes we made or fast-track their own growth in all areas of life.  For us, learning from others and their experiences helps us avoid unnecessary suffering and achieve personal growth.

Joanne MacLennan Art

https://www.instagram.com/joannemaclennanart/

https://jamelynstephan.com

https://jamelynstephan.com/meet-with-me/

https://www.instagram.com/jamelyn_stephan_coaching/

jamelyn@jamelynstpehan.com

Transcript

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I'm jamielynn Stephan and this is want to want it episode number 108, their pain, your gain. Welcome to want to want it a podcast for women of the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints who are ready to ignite not only their sexual desire, but all of their desires to create a more fulfilling life and marriage. I'm jamielynn Stephan. I'm a certified life coach, a wife, and a mother of seven children. I'm excited to share my personal journey to desire with you and teach you how to desire more as well happy Tuesday, everybody. Welcome to the podcast today. I, was really debating about what I was going to talk about today. I didn't have an idea. And then last night I had the privilege of driving my mom to an appointment. And on the way back from this appointment, she got a phone call and I'm only hearing half of the phone call. But as she's talking, I start to sense that she has a friend who is in a difficult situation right now. And she has another friend who has already been in that same situation. And so she has reached out to this friend, that's already gone through this. To essentially say, Hey. Would you be willing to. Talk to my friend and help her as she navigates this really tough situation. And I could tell by what she was saying, that this woman was totally agreeable. To reaching out and talking to this woman and, and helping her navigate whatever this new difficult situation in her life is. And I was so struck again. At how valuable each of our lived experiences can be for other people. If we are willing to share it. So today, I just want to talk about how sometimes my pain is your gain. In fact on this podcast, I share a lot of lessons that I have learned sometimes very painfully to help you. It's the reason that I coach on intimacy and desire because I have done some big walks on that trail and I want to help other people. I get where I am or where they want to go faster and more effectively than I did. And I also want to thank and acknowledge other people whose pain has been my gain. Other people who have led out before me, or ahead of me in life who did some really hard things and helps me either not make the same mistakes or helped me fast-track because they were willing to share their story and their experiences and the lessons that they learned with me. In Waterton lakes, national park, there is a mountain that sits on the other side of the lake across from the town site called Vme. And it's beautiful. I love Vinny because I've grown up my whole life, looking at it. And when you look at Vinny and you think about climbing to the top of it, you say to yourself, I think I could just go straight up that shoot to the top of the mountain. It would be no problem. And for years, I honestly believed that is how you piqued Vinny. AnD then it had some family members try it that way. Uh, up the face of the mountain and it did not go well at all. So it wasn't till after that, that I learned that to peak Vme. You actually have to go around from the backside of the mountain to peak you can't go up the front. Well, I actually think you. Might be able to, but it's like super dangerous and sketchy. This is good information for me because I wanted to pick that mountain and I am so grateful that I realized and learned, no, no, no. You go around the back. So many of, you know, I like to hike. And so often when I'm hiking, I do think to myself who found this path up this mountain? Like how do they figure out that this was the way to the peak? It must've taken a lot of trial and error, which I am uninterested in doing myself because like my family and Vinny, if there's one thing I have learned about hiking over the years is that it is not a good idea for me to try to find my own way up a mountain. It is dangerous. It is exhausting. And honestly it makes no sense when there are online maps and things that you can follow to the peak of almost every mountain. Hiking is enjoyable because the path is laid out for me to succeed. Like I'm going to get there. If I stay on the path. Someone else's pain. Is now my gain, whoever it was, who had to keep trying different ways. So they finally figured out how to get to the peak. Thank you. I now get to avoid the sheer drop-offs. I avoid getting stuck in a place where there's no turning back and no more going forward. Right. That's scary. I avoid getting lost. And most of all, I avoid wasting time. Now, like I've done some dumb things on hikes that haven't turned out well. Right? Because either wasn't paying attention to the map and when you're scrambling, you gotta pay attention. Or I kind of thought, oh, I'm just going to avoid a big climb by kind of going around on this little goat trail. So I don't have to get this extra elevation. And didn't work out very well, or I'm just going to climb up. This scree instead of taking the path along it, and in the end, didn't save me any time. Right. So I've learned that almost always. If I think I can find a faster route than the one that's already laid out, I'm going to probably end up hiking longer. So don't ignore the hiking experts. They've done the painful work of finding the best path. So just take it. I remember when I was first married and my sister, Brianne, who is just younger than me was first married as well. We just had these young little families, super busy husbands. And we would be talking to our mom about kind of the struggles of like our husbands are home. Our kids are little or up in the night with babies, just kind of. What life is like when you're a new mom. And I just remember my mom constantly saying to us, you guys are so much further ahead than I was at your age and stage of life. And I remember at first feeling like that's impossible. Like she's acting like we're so put together compared to her, but I felt like a mess. But my sister brand pointed out to me that every generation stands on the shoulders of those who went before them. And I realized she is right. As my mom is growing up, quote, unquote, growing up and learning lessons as a mother and a wife and a woman in the world. I get the privilege of watching her. She's sharing things with me, she's coming to me and saying, I'm so glad I did this. Or I wish that I had done this differently. And so as a child and a teenager and a young adult, I'm learning by watching and listening to my mom. And so when I hit the ground running as a new bride and a new mom, of course I'm ahead of where she was at 20, 25 years old. Because of her and because of where she is now at 45 and 50 years old. I have the luxury of learning from 45 year old mom. Now I'm not having to take my lessons from 20 year old mom. And I see this now with my own children. Because of my growth and many of my painful lessons they're ahead of me when I was their age. My pain has an honestly, my, I hope my pain is always there. Gain. Look around your home. What do you see that you have because of the pain of others? I promise you. I am not. Hand-washing my clothes. I hardly have to hand wash my dishes. I don't sleep on a dirt floor. I don't cook my meals over a fire. I don't have to dress an animal skins in the winter. Like when the wind is blowing my house, stay standing. These luxuries that we enjoy in our homes are because people had pain they wanted to solve for and worked hard to do it. People are still doing this. Look around you and be so grateful for the pain others have had to endure and the motivation it gave them to invent so many comforts that we now enjoy. Their pain. Our gain. I have a good friend. Her name is Joanne McClennan. You should look her up. She is an artist. Check out her Instagram. Maybe I'll put her Lincoln my show notes. I will, I will put her link in my show notes. She just has this beautiful, unique. Alive art. I just really, really love her art. And right now in her business and in her life, it is so important to her that she shares her journey with other people who want to. I get into their art. Moms who maybe have put that aside in their lives. People who want to learn a little more about being an artist and how to do it. And she wants to share like tips. She's learned how she sets up her space. The supply, she used different tricks. She has, you know, how she balances being a mom and an artist and all of these things, right. She just wants to share this with people because she wants to encourage people to move forward and help them learn some of the best lessons that she has learned. So they aren't having to reinvent the wheel. She's trying to make her pain, their gain, which is so amazing, right. It's just like, let me help you. So come and join me, watch my journey. Learn from me. It's so beautiful. I love listening to Jennifer Finlayson Feis room for too. It's a paid subscription podcast. It's not outrageously expensive, invest in it is so worth it. But on this podcast. You get to listen to her coaching. People in their marriages. So you just get these couples that just share their honest marriages. And you listened to her, talk to them about it, coach them through it, advise them and direct them as so, so good. These people are sharing their pain and they are being really, really vulnerable. And I gained so much from it without having to be the one sharing. My marriage benefits so much from this. And I don't actually have to have the pain of going through this session, being out there in the world. And so open. And honestly you all benefit from it too, because I share so much of what I learned on here and my clients benefit because it gives me more tools in my toolbox to help them. Their pain, our gain. When I took my life coach training, they also gave us business training. And so often Brooke Castillo would talk about helping us fast-track she would kind of just say, listen, I want to help you guys fast track because by learning from me, you're not going to have to go learn all these hard lessons that I've already learned. Right. You don't need to go learn these on your own. You're going to learn your own lessons. But let me help you share what I have learned. She was helping us skip ahead and giving us this potential to do what she did in less time. So many business leaders in the world are doing this right business books. Come learn these lessons. I had to learn the hard way. Let me share them with you. So you don't have to therapists, coaches, all these self-help. Books all the whole self-help industry, right. Is like, listen let me help you gain from my pain. That's what the whole industry helps us do. As a coach. I am also trying to do this as well. When I went through my coach training, everybody that was in coach training with me, had to pick a niche, right? You have to pick a group of people that you want to focus on. You want to market to, and you want to work with. And almost everybody there picked a group of people that were the same as them, a group of people that they could help, who had similar pain to what they had experienced. And they wanted to help them get out of that pain faster than they had got out of that pain. That's what I love about coaching. I love helping my clients fast track to healing. Not because it doesn't still take time and energy and not because it's totally pain-free because it's not, but I can help them eliminate a lot of unnecessary suffering. When I share my experience and my lessons with them. I think of those around me who have been willing to share with me and share with my kids. When they've made mistakes. And the impact that that's had on their life. And sometimes these are small little things. But other times it can be really big things. So when someone says, Hey, like I got hooked into pornography and this led me down a really hard path in my life or. I started using drugs or drinking, and this was my experience. Once that I had, and it was super difficult. These are really valuable stories. They are. So personal and raw a lot of the time, but they are so good at helping people around them avoid the same path. When you experienced deep loss or really deep disappointment. Suddenly, it feels like people come crawling out of the woodwork who have experienced the same thing. And if nothing else, they can offer you understanding you can't find anywhere else. Because of their really painful experience they can offer you. Permission to feel all that you want to feel and all that you're going to feel, and they can help you navigate kind of the unexpected things that are going to come up potentially for you. As you walk this really dark path. And sometimes when we're in these really high emotion experiences, we need somebody who's been there because we don't. To anyone else to give us advice. I don't want to hear advice from someone who's never been here. I don't want your comfort and maybe that's prideful, but a lot of it is just like, you don't get it. And so when we have somebody who comes in and we can trust that they get it. And they say to us, like here's things to experience and listen, you can totally feel this way. That's totally normal. And they also often can offer us hope that we can't access, but because they've been there and we see them, it's easier for us to believe. Maybe I can feel better one day. Maybe I can get there now. It's not glad that they've had to walk this path that you're now walking, but they are so grateful that it can be used to help and heal you and others. And it is wonderful, wonderful thing. I'm sure many of you, if you sat down and really thought about it, We'll be able to name people whose pain has been your gain. And other people who have gained from your pain. As I have watched moms get their kids ready to serve missions. Right. They're always looking to other parents, who've already done this to help them to know what to do, what to avoid. Right. They get on Facebook groups and they find out like, what are the best clothes for people serving in Korea for their mission? And they go to the parents. And like, what's the best thing to send them. If I'm going to send them a package, right. There was a woman in our state who became an expert on south American visas for Canadian missionaries because of the long painful experience she had trying to get it all done for her own son. I watched my sister-in-law. She gets this cancer diagnosis and I have friends. Who've had these cancer diagnosis. And they connect with people who are ahead of them on their treatment paths and they not only support one another, but they give each other tips and tricks to help make the symptoms of chemo and radiation more bearable. They just openly share their stories to give hope and validation to those people who are coming behind them. AA meetings and other 12 step programs are built to provide people an easier path to recovery than just trying to figure it out themselves. When you have your first baby, you are so thankful for what to expect when you're expecting. I don't even know if that book still exists, but you're just so thankful for people who've gone before you who can help, you know, how to deal with morning sickness and C-sections and stitches and nursing. And. Your baby's bum and cracked nipples and sleepless nights and fevers and all of these things that you're just so grateful that someone else can say to you, oh, here's what to do. Here's something I learned. I found this super effective. My grandma was a laundry expert. There was no stain. She could not get out. And because of that, My mom is a laundry expert. But my grandma didn't have all the products we have today to fight stains or the internet to rely on for these ideas. She had to figure out a lot of this on her own, and we all have benefited from it. It's such a small thing really. When in the scheme of life, but for me, when we were students with this big family, I couldn't afford for clothes to be ruined by stains. Not only did that child still need to wear those clothes. I needed it to go through more children. So I couldn't afford to buy every child, a new wardrobe when you're relying on hand-me-downs you need good laundry tips. My grandma's pain has definitely been my gain. So look around you. There are so many things you benefit from because of the painful paths others have had to walk. Sometimes the only thing and others painful path can offer us is courage. I had a friend just pointed this out to me today. She said, you know, as you share with me the courage that you are using in this situation, it helps me have courage to do the same. So she understands that she's going to actually have to experience all the discomfort of her own circumstance. But my courage gives her courage, which is shocking because I don't feel like I'm always a very courageous person, but as soon as she said that, I thought this is true though. I have done so many uncomfortable things because I saw other people who were willing to do it and it gave me the courage I needed to move forward. Lastly, because I am a Christian and I do love Jesus Christ. I want to acknowledge that he is the ultimate giver of gain for pain. He suffered for all of my sins. He suffered for all my pains and sicknesses and disappointments so that I can be forgiven so that I can receive strength beyond my own. And so that I can be healed. So, if not for his pain, I have no gain.'cause what would any of this matter anyways, without him? I know there are so many examples out there of people's pain being our gain. I guess, really what I wanted to say today was how grateful I am for other people who have suffered and who've been willing to share their stories or their work so that I don't have to suffer the same way. And so that my life can be improved. I'm so thankful for those who've gone before those whose shoulders I have the privilege of standing on that allow me to see further and reach higher. And I am so thankful to know that one way, God, consecrates my difficulties for my good. Is by allowing those difficulties and their accompanying lessons to bless the lives of others. Take a minute today to express to God or to someone else your gratitude for them and for how you have gained because of them have a great week, everybody. Bye. Thanks for listening today. If you like what you hear on the podcast, and you'd like to learn more, feel free to head over to my website. Jamilin Stephan coaching.com or find me on Instagram or Facebook at Jamileh. step in coaching.