suffering – Thought Canvas

Most of Our Suffering Comes From Avoidance

If you’re ever in a state of uneasiness or discontent, it probably stems from the fact that you’re avoiding something. Maybe you’re avoiding having a difficult conversation with someone you love, or simply avoiding the tasks you need to do for work or school. Or it could be that you’re avoiding thinking about major life decisions and are just floating through a sort of limbo. Or you may be avoiding to complete events of the past, and unwilling to accept whatever happened. Avoidance of our suffering compounds our suffering.

To overcome the suffering we need to live with courage. Tell people the things you need to tell them. Stay on top of the important tasks – apply for jobs as quickly as you can, finish your reports way before the deadline, rehearse your presentations well in advance. Doing the hard things first gives you encouragement that you can attack anything that comes your way, and overcome any stumbling blocks that inevitably appear.

If you want to banish that familiar sinking feeling, you already know what you need to do – stop avoiding it.

Why You’re Suffering So Much and How to Deal With It

Picture this: A car gets stolen.

Now picture this: Your car gets stolen.

Did you feel the difference? If so, why is there a difference?

Why is the feeling more intense or important now because of a small change in the sentence?

It’s the human ego that creates and preserves the concept of I, me and mine. Ego needs separation from others and differentiation. It likes to attach to objects of ownership. It reacts to loss, and feelings of inferiority. The ego is selfish, and doesn’t care about others. The ego wants to be a victim. Self-importance and being the centre of the universe is the ego.

The ego and its mental concept of I, me and mine one of the biggest traps we fall into and causes pain, misery and suffering.

If we think of a problem that we have, we feel pain and anguish. Now imagine that the problem wasn’t yours, but someone else’s. Would you feel as bad about it?

I first came across this phenomenon while I was on a vipassana meditation course. It involved sitting on the floor and meditating for ten hours a day for ten days. Sitting completely still for so long on the floor caused a lot of pain to my joints. My eyes were closed, but I was grimacing, with sweat pouring down my face as my thoughts went to how ridiculous the idea of doing the course was. I was then taught the concept of ego and I, me and mine. I was also taught the separation of physical and mental pain.

The next day, during meditation, my face was no longer grimacing, and I was sweating a lot less. The pain that would have rated at 9/10 the day before suddenly became a 3/10. I was flabbergasted. I was doing the same thing as before, feeling the same physical pain but I wasn’t suffering nearly as much! It was a combination of recognizing that physical pain didn’t have to equal mental pain, the detachment of my pain from my ego, and recognizing that the day before when I was suffering so much, everyone else in the room was going through exactly the same thing and I didn’t care at all about them! Oh that selfish ego…

The self-importance that we can sometimes get trapped in means that we end up taking ourselves far too seriously. So how do we stop needlessly suffering because of this?

During the meditation course, I replaced the vocabulary of I, me and mine with my name instead. So instead of saying “My pain, my problems…” it transformed into “Dong Ming’s pain…”. That way, I could metaphorically stand back from my mind and body, be more rational, more detached, and more objective.

Another way that I use to make seemingly difficult decisions is to imagine that I am advising someone in the same situation. This way, you sometimes end up realizing that the answer was simple and you just got caught up in your own self-importance, took life too seriously and tricked yourself into thinking the stakes were higher than they were.

Man’s Search For Meaning: What Viktor Frankl Can Teach Us About the Meaning of Life

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who was subjected to the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. Once the war ended and he was released, he wrote Man’s Search For Meaning in a nine-day span, describing his experience in the concentration camps and his theory of logotherapy – that meaning was the central motivational force in human beings.

Most of the book describes the conditions that the Jews had to endure in the Nazi concentration camps. I couldn’t help to feel more grateful that I hadn’t ever had to deal with that kind of suffering or torture before. Even as we complain of being locked down in a pandemic, it pales in comparison to the suffering endured in the Nazi concentration camps.

Frankl outlines that meaning is the central motivating force in human beings. The meaning that an individual has doesn’t have to be the same as everybody else’s, and an individual can have multiple meanings for life. The meanings can also change with time and circumstances.

Frankl described three sources of meaning:

The first source of meaning comes from life’s work. Frankl was determined to survive the concentration camp because he believed that he needed to produce academic work on his theory of logotherapy once the war finished. While he was in the concentration camp he was unable pursue that work, so he had to make sure he survived to be able to get back to regular life as an academic and finish his work.

The second source of meaning comes from love. Frankl remembered that when he was on his arduous daily walk to his labour camp during the Second World War, he would picture his wife, the love he had for her, as well as the thought of being able to see her again once the war was over. This was another motivating factor for him to survive the concentration camp.

The third source of meaning comes from suffering. In the concentration camps, Frankl realized that the Nazis could take away everything except for the attitude that he chose to have towards the suffering he was experiencing. Once he added meaning (and sometimes humour) to his suffering, he no longer felt as if he was really suffering. Frankl observed that there was a deadly effect for anyone who lost hope and courage in the concentration camps, as well as those who were overly optimistic about their release dates (to find out eventually that they were not released by the date they had in their mind).

Frankl does note however, that just because meaning can can be found in suffering, you do not need to seek suffering to find meaning (the first and second source of meaning should be the main focus).

In summary, Frankl’s book is a reality check for us. What it also does beautifully is take the pressure off the individual to find their one life’s purpose. We can remember that there can be many purposes, and they change over time. As long as there’s an inkling of meaning in the moment, we might just be okay.

The Four Agreements: Don’t Take Anything Personally

In three years of working in door-to-door sales, I realized that there is no way of lasting as long as I have without starting to believe that rejection is not personal.

When I first started in the job I would finish work with no sales and beat myself up for the rest of the evening about it. Everyone said no to me because I sucked at speaking, I sucked at listening, and I sucked at sales. Although this was almost certainly true, it was massively disempowering and my confidence levels were in freefall.

I eventually started getting a few sales and gradually started improving. Fast forward to my attitude today and it is completely transformed. If someone says no to my offering now, I just tell myself that they didn’t want it. Of course it’s a lot easier to say that now, knowing that I have sold close to 300 security systems.

The consequence of having this present attitude is that it’s stress-free. I know who I am and I’m secure in myself. Instead of coming home with the world on my shoulders, I just know that I will put the work in and I’ll get what I get. I’ll make hay while the sun is shining, and just place one foot in front of the other when results aren’t so good. But things will come good.

Taking things personally comes from the need to be accepted, the lack of self-identification and self-confidence. Occasionally, I will knock on someone’s door that will yell expletives, and be physically and verbally threatening. I stay calm, excuse myself from the situation and carry on to the next door. I know it’s not personal. Have they slept? How is their mental health? Is he or she just a terrible person? Whatever the answers are, none of it has anything to do with me. They’ve done what they’ve done because of them.

Say if someone lies to you. You get offended, and it ruins your day, or even your week. But that person probably lies to everyone, including themselves. It’s just part of their character. They’re the common denominator. So who’s really going to suffer in the end?

To take something personally is an imbalance of self-importance. It’s likely that if the same thing happened to someone else, they wouldn’t care the slightest bit (or at least not as much). The fact that it’s happened to them magnifies and exacerbates the situation.

To take something personally is to choose suffering over peace. Next time you encounter a choice to take something personally or not, which will you choose?