Conscious Growth.com

May 16th, 2008

Suffering is a painful yet normal part of life. Each day comes with tragedy and injustice; some days much worse than others. Whatever the trouble – be it physical, financial, inter-personal, or environmental – life throws it at you.

Your mom passes away. You lose your job or go bankrupt. Your special event is canceled due to rain. Your plans didn’t quite work out. And it happens again and again in different forms. When life changes, you have little power over what happens. All you can do is choose your response. You have two choices: (1) work with life or (2) work against it.

Working with life lets you embrace what is and move toward a solution. You weather the storm and are better because of it. Working against life only adds to the suffering. Now, your problem is not only external. It’s also internal.

Listed below are 10 choices people make that work against life; responses you may want to avoid.

The 10 Worst Responses to Suffering

1. Assuming Too Much Control - You’ve been given control over the decisions you make. This in turn influences the world around you. Added suffering happens when you confuse what you influence with what you control. “She should act differently. That should have turned out another way. This shouldn’t be.” If you’re saying the word should, you’ve assumed too much.
2. Not Taking Responsibility - The gap between stimulus and response is the power to choose. But giving up that response-ability makes you powerless. You become a victim of your environment. You’re up when things are up. Down when things are down.
3. Unaware of Projection - You do not see the world as it is, but as you are. You project meaning onto the world through perception or mental maps. While life is certainly difficult, the degree of it is relative to you. In reality, you make the rules and project it onto events.
4. Living in the Past - Instead of embracing what is, you live in your head. You compare, complain and criticize the moment with the past. You focus on how good it used to be and how things doesn’t match up today. Or worse, you combine #4 with #2. You say that you are powerless and imprisoned by your past and that you or the situation can’t change.
5. Living in the Future - Again, you live in your head but with a different focus. Now your thoughts are directed toward hope or security. You worry about events that aren’t happening or you are wait for the day you finally make it.
6. Pretending Happiness is Out There - You place your source of peace on a changing environment. You keep in it that special relationship, that amazing car or that upcoming paycheck. If it were to be taken from you, you would never recover. Your life would have no meaning.
7. Over Labeling your Experience - There is an ebb and flow to everything. Thoughts come and go. Emotions come and go. All things come and go. But if you don’t get this, you may over label your experience instead of simply experience it.
8. Living in Denial - You may live in denial to avoid its growing pains of external suffering. Perhaps you don’t think you can handle it so you avoid facing it. But moving away from the truth of your situation only keeps internal suffering in place. So it slowly eats at you.
9. Failing to Understand - Ignorance is part of being human. Not knowing what to do and doing it. You make the same mistake over and over until you finally learn your lesson.
10. Failing to Act - Incompetence is another part of being human. Knowing what to do and not doing it. Sometimes you may be unable or just unwilling. You must summon the courage to embrace the growing pains of suffering.

The challenge is not what lies before us. It is our response to it. External suffering has and always will exist. Internal suffering, however, is a choice you make. By learning to work with life, you create the internal strength to rise above its limitations. By resisting what is (responses #1-10), you only create more suffering. It’s challenging either way, so choose wisely.

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