On the surface, we fight certain circumstances of life, but at a deeper level, we never fight the circumstances. We fight all the feelings and emotion that the circumstances reactivate.

It’s the automatic, subconscious avoidance of this hurt that gets us into trouble. Healing this hurt is the key to having your life be as great as it can be.

There are two levels of hurt. One is the emotion of the circumstances. The other is the childhood hurt, or core issue, of feeling worthless, not good enough, not worth loving, a failure, or some other form of being "not okay."

It’s not the truth that we are this way. It’s just an old hurt, but it’s a hurt that totally runs our lives. We’ll talk more about this deeper hurt in the next section.

Now we are going to talk about how to release the emotion of the circumstances. The best way to do this is to look at little children.

Little children are masters at healing hurt. When a child feels hurt, the child cries. Then, after the child finishes crying, the hurt is all gone.

Little children are able to release their hurt because they do something that we don't notice. They feel their hurt willingly. This allows the hurt to run its course. It comes and then it goes.

This is the natural process for healing hurt, but our culture teaches us to do something very different with our hurt. Instead of learning that it is okay to feel our hurt, we have been taught to fight it. "Big boys and girls don't cry. If you want something to cry about, I'll give you something to cry about."

We soon learn to avoid our hurt. This then circumvents the natural healing process. Instead of feeling our hurt willingly and letting it go, we fight the hurt and keep it inside.

We try to push the hurt away, but we can't. The hurt isn't outside of us, it's inside. So, in our automatic attempt to push the hurt away, we actually push it deeper inside.

We suppress our hurt. We then spend the rest of our lives running from it. But no matter what we do, we can't get away from it. We will continue to feel our hurt whether we like it or not.

As long as you have this hurt, it will get triggered and you are going to feel it. Your only choice is to feel it willingly like a child or to feel it unwillingly.

When you feel your hurt unwillingly, it turns into pain and stays. When you feel your hurt willingly, the hurt runs its course and disappears.

To see this in your life, find a time when you were hurt and you allowed yourself to cry. Then, after you cried the last tear, you felt a wonderful freedom. This is a time when you felt your hurt willingly.

So feel your hurt willingly like a child. Keep telling yourself, "It's okay to feel the hurt. It's okay." Let the hurt come and let it go. Dive into the hurt and cry it as hard as you can. Crying is the most powerful tool for releasing hurt.

When you feel your hurt, make sure you feel it because you want to. Feel it purposefully and intentionally. Feel it at choice, because you want to reach in, grab it and pull it out. This is the key to a fast healing.

When you feel your hurt because you are forced to, or because you feel like a victim of your circumstances, the healing process is very slow.

If you feel the hurt but there aren't any tears, fake the tears and get into the emotion. This can be just as effective as feeling the real tears. Reach in and grab all the hurt you can. Exaggerate the hurt and feel it fully.

You may notice certain thoughts as you cry: "Why did she do this?" "Why can't she love me?" Let the thoughts guide your crying. Cry each thought. Then move to the next one.

Let the hurt take over. Feel the hurt of your circumstances and the deeper hurt of feeling worthless, not worth loving, failure, not good enough, or whatever your core issue is.

It’s this deeper hurt that sabotages your life. We’ll talk about how to heal it in the next section.

Go to the next section.