What If Peace Left a Scar?

How to intentionally learn from your own happiness

This week, I’m thinking about a diary entry from Chuck Palanhiuk:

It’s hard to forget pain, but even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show from happiness. We learn so little from peace.

My take:

This gets me wondering, what if we did learn from our peace??

What if happiness left a scar?

What if our positive experiences and joy were just as memorable and impactful to us as our tough times?

Chuck’s right. We don’t usually hold space or learn from our joy. This idea of remembering pain and skimming over our own happiness is backed by science, too. There’s an evolutionary reason that roughly 80% of our thoughts are negative, and that we’re around 6x more likely to remember negative experiences (or reviews!) over positive ones.

But what if we didn’t skim past our happiness and joys? What if we could see and hold the marks of our happiness — and how we’ve actually been incredibly successful in creating aspects of our lives that we truly love? What if we gave that as much attention as the wounds we’ve experienced?

This week, be intentional. What are the scars or ‘marks’ of your own happiness? Where do they show up? What parts of your life have you built that you’re incredibly proud, happy, or joyful about?

If peace left a scar — what areas of your life are beautifully marked up? And what can you learn from them?

In a world that seems to prioritize busyness, strain, chaos, and drama — it’s worth settling into the peace you do have.

Let your peace leave a scar.

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