 My pain is my greatest gift, if I listen to it. When I was in my early 20s and I had found this girl that I was really romantically interested in, and I was super excited about asking her out and super afraid, and eventually I managed to muster up the guts to ask her out, and she rejected me, which was pretty much a common occurrence at that stage in my life. It was around that time afterwards that I heard her talking to a friend, and she was talking about how skinny I was, almost like I had a kid's body, like a child's body. And this was one of those things that kind of struck me to the core because it was something I was always insecure about, that I didn't have my ideal body, that I was born really skinny, I had those kind of genetics. But it was the pain from that rejection and from many others, not just that one, that drove me to want to become the kind of person that I would respect, that I would admire. The kind of person that was hungry to improve his life, that thought, hey, Alex, you're great now, but you can do a hell of a lot better. It was that pain that became my gift because I listened to it, instead of just complaining. It was my pain sitting at a meaningless job for 40, 50 hours a week, wondering what the purpose of my life was, sitting there on a piece of land, earning my salary, dying day by day, death by a thousand cuts, wondering what my purpose was, what the point of all this was. If I'm going to die tomorrow, why do this? I didn't want to be at that job. It was that pain that drove me to become my own boss, to become an entrepreneur who could do the things that he formerly thought was impossible. Because I never in a million years thought I could become an entrepreneur, I could write multiple books, I could become successful, I could become a YouTuber. Those weren't possible for me at the time, but my pain was my gift because I listened to it and it drove me. I wanted to see the world because I was stuck at that cubicle for so many years and I saw my friends going off and having these once in a lifetime experiences and I knew that at the end of our lives they would be the ones dying fulfilled and I would be the one dying empty because I was working and I wasn't enjoying my life and experiencing all these things. But just like you can run away from love, you can ignore the pain and continue living the same life and being the same person. My pain is my greatest gift if I listen to it. Your story of being abused as a kid and never ever wanting to have a dysfunctional marriage like you saw your parents have, of never ever wanting to be beaten by your dad and therefore beating your kids, your story of being born in a ghetto in a poor area where you never had opportunity or healthy food or happy people, that story of the household you were born in that was pure poison, that pain will drive you as your greatest gift to become the world's best mom, the world's best dad, to have a marriage and just one marriage. That pain if you listen to it and only if you listen to it, that will be the greatest gift in your life because it will give you that inner nuclear reactor in your soul to drive you beyond all the obstacles that stand in front of you right now. My pain is my greatest gift if I listen to it. Your story of being rejected by love, that one person you thought truly was the one and now they're gone and you're left feeling that you're not good enough. After the bitterness subsides, that rejection will become the exact force to drive yourself and improve yourself at a level that you have never seen before in your life. If you allow it, if you don't fall into the bitterness and the sadness and the victimization, my pain is my greatest gift if I listen to it. And of all the things that happen to you in your life, pain will happen. Pain is guaranteed, pain is a necessity of existing for existing as a human on this planet in this body. But your pain can become your greatest gift if you don't fall into hopelessness, if you understand that pain is nothing but a gift and pain is the most powerful, the beginning, the essence, the alpha and the omega of almost anyone who has done something incredible with their life.