Episode 37 - My 8 steps for coping

Today marks a special day in my life with chronic pain, a milestone, an opportunity to look back over the past 10,000 days of my journey. Was it the event itself that shaped me to be who I am, or was it something else?https://onewingkiwi.com/

I may at times make this journey seem as easy as a walk in the park, but it is not without it's challenges. My philosophy doesn't make me immune to emotion, prevent me from wondering "what if...", but it has allowed me to fine tune the tools I need to keep me on track in life!https://onewingkiwi.com/

What does pain make you do? Does it make you angry? Sad? Resentful? Thankful? In today's episode I take a closer look at this subject and share my views on what power I feel pain has in my life.  You might be surprised. https://onewingkiwi.com/

Frustration. At Life. At others. At ourselves. We've all felt it before, maybe struggled with it, maybe let it hold us back. All too often it's seen as an unwanted emotion. But we can change our perception of it to be something that drives us. In this episode I look at what role frustration has played in my journey and how it improved my life.https://onewingkiwi.com/ https://onewingkiwi.com/

Balance is required everywhere in life, as Mr Miyagi said, " Whole life have a balance". Nowhere is this more important for me than managing chronic pain.https://onewingkiwi.com/https://onewingkiwi.com/

A lot of people, not just chronic pain patients, struggle to understand why I feel the way I do about life with constant pain and adversity. I've even faced criticism because of my beliefs. Normally I wouldn't address these, but a couple comments recently made me think that I need to explain why I do feel the way I do, in the hope that more people can view adversity from a different perspective.https://onewingkiwi.com/ https://onewingkiwi.com/

As the reach of the podcast grows and my activity in pain groups increases I'm getting more requests on my coping strategies, so I decided to put them into one episode so anyone can get a quick overview of how I manage my chronic pain. There will be some old and new concepts here, so something for everyone who is interested.https://onewingkiwi.com/https://onewingkiwi.com/

How can I stay so calm and controlled despite living with chronic pain? How can it be that I can be going through pain that would knock most off of their feet yet you wouldn't tell by looking at me? The secret for me is in understanding the difference between hurt and harm.https://onewingkiwi.com/

Today I'm joined by a strong voice for self-management of chronic pain, Pete Moore from the UK. Pete has developed a process for anyone to use in dealing with persistent pain and attends numerous seminars on pain management internationally advocating his 12 step plan which he details for us towards the end of the episode. Join us to hear his story, how his pain journey started, the support groups he created, the story behind the pain toolkit, his work in Virtual Reality and even his own AI avatar where you can ask him questions online. Pete in turn interviewed me a few days ago and you can find that interview on my website in the Videos section.https://onewingkiwi.com/https://www.paintoolkit.org/https://onewingkiwi.com/

In this episode I combine the lessons Stoicism teaches us with the lessons I learnt for myself over the past nearly 27yrs. Having only recently discovering for myself this school of thought, I found the writings from such noted philosophers such as Zeno, Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius aligned perfectly with what I had taught myself. These have helped me navigate my way successfully through the adversity I have faced and I'm sure can help many others with the obstacles and hurdles life throws us all.https://onewingkiwi.com/https://onewingkiwi.com/