It took me a while to decide on a title for this blog post – and yes, it may sound contradictory, but there is beauty in being broken. The bumps and hurdles on the road of life leave scars, but also leave us with experience and knowledge.

I love the Japanese art of Kintsukuroi. I only discovered this art late in life, but as with all things, I am sure that we come across information and/or learnings as and when we are supposed to.

Kintsukuroi is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a lacquer resin sprinkled with powdered gold. We can learn a lot from this art – especially the core belief that something can be more beautiful for having been broken.

So often we are embarrassed by our scars. I know I used to be very embarrassed about a 5cm scar on my right breast (lump removed 20 years ago). I have some scars on my right leg (motorcycle accident 15 years ago) and I have a definite portruding bone where my left shoulder bone didn’t grow back properly. And a few more minor scars and aches and pains – each carrying its own story, and a memory (some good, some bad).

I now embrace my scars. I lovingly trace the visible ones, and remind myself that there is joy in being alive. Each one of my larger scars could have been the end of me – instead each one means a new beginning, with new learnings and new experience. Even my invisible heart scars from hurts inflicted by loved ones once trusted has changed from throbbing, aching scars to reminders of paths that once crossed and ran together for a while, now separated.

Repainting my scars with gold, keeping the good memories, can only do me good. Negative memories lead to negative emotions, and negative emotions cause distress that is completely unnecessary.

As a lifecoach, one of the primary teachings I like to convey to my clients, is that our emotions attract the life we want. If we continuously focus on the negative, all we experience will be negative. The same energy can be used on focussing on the positive. This is no “Pollyanna” approach to life (that would be unrealistic – no-one can “fake” happiness all the time). However, we can definitely choose what we focus on most of the time, and if the negative surfaces, we can choose the coat the negative with gold, retaining the positive learnings, whilst letting go of the negative emotions.