When you are in chronic pain life becomes very heavy.  You evolve into a lifestyle that is just surviving.  You are just trying to keep your head above water dealing with a significant amount of stress.  Additionally, you are carrying a heavy pain burden.  You may have forgotten what it is like to live your life with deep joy and excitement about the possibilities.  I would suggest an exercise that I have personally found helpful.




  • Find a quiet time and place where you can just think and possibly go into a meditative state.  Think back to a time of your life when you were the happiest.
    • Then visually take yourself back there, trying to remember every possible detail about that era of your life.  Remember:
      • Dreams/ goals
      • Attitudes
      • Friends
      • Activities
      • Feelings and emotions around specific events
      • Spend as much time as you can with this exercise and repeat it a few times
      • Once you have really internalized that joyous period of your life then sit down again and fully experience your present life
        • Compare it visually to the era of your life when you were the happiest
        • Note the gap between then and now
        • Make a commitment to get that vision back
        • Write it down in as much detail about the kind of life you want to regain.
          • Don’t worry about creating a specific plan right now.