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Posts tagged with “suffering”

Hate Your Life? 4 Ways to Boost Your Happiness

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“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” ~Desmond Tutu

I hate my life. Does this statement ring true to you at all? Do you feel like you’re at rock bottom? The good news is, it might not be as bad as you fear.

I spent a lot of time feeling afraid of everything.

I had an emotional collapse, and it made life suddenly seem terrifying. What had happened? Had the town I was living in changed? Had my country suddenly become different?

No, I had changed the filter through which I saw …

How to Make Sense of the Anxiety That Comes with Being a Parent

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“You must first teach a child he is loved. Only then is he ready to learn everything else.” ~Amanda Morgan

If I had a nickel for every parent who asked me, “So, if we do (…insert a strategy they have been given…), can we know for sure that he won’t have to deal with (…insert list of problems here …) when he grows up?”

Sadly, there are no nickels for hearing the question, nor guarantees to offer anxious parent. In fact, parental anxiety exists largely because life has no guarantees.

Nevertheless, the question in itself is worth considering.

So let’s …

5 Meditation “Mistakes” That Increase Our Suffering

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“If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” ~Shunryu Suzuki

So many of us come to meditation through our suffering. Nearly everyone who has come to walk the spiritual path can spin a tale of sorrow, frustration, and often devastation. Through our life struggles and difficulties, we become conditioned into habitual patternings of mind that seem to offer us no escape, and often turn to meditation to find relief.

I always say that anxiety was my …

Why This Will Be the Year I Stop Running from Pain

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“One has to accept pain as a condition of existence.” ~Morris West

This may seem sounds counter-intuitive, but this year I want to let go of trying to avoid suffering.

It doesn’t mean that I am a masochist and plan to spend the next year being miserable. It’s more a question of learning to accept life as it is—uncertain, full of surprises, and with its full quota of difficult circumstances.

Our Wish for Happiness

The thing is that we all want to be happy. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if we fear not being happy, then we …

What Helps Me Put Things in Perspective

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.” ~Douglas Adams

The Buddha famously said that life is full of suffering. While I acknowledge there is much suffering in the world, for my privileged life in the West, I like to think of it more as life being full of challenges. You see, sometimes the suffering part is optional.…

Pain, Suffering, Joy, Love—Meditation Helps Me Experience It All

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“I know, things are getting tougher when I can’t get the top off the bottom of the barrel.” ~Jesse Michaels

No one thought I was going to live to see twenty. Including me. In fact, I vividly remember telling my father that it would be miraculous if I saw twenty-five. It wasn’t emotional. It was simply a statement of fact. And yet here I am—mid-thirties, wife, daughter, one on the way, house, job, sense of purpose. What happened?

I was one of those kids with questions. Big questions. “What does it all mean?” questions. I used to wonder what …

Understanding the Cycle of Pain: How to Transmute Anger into Empathy

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“When we get angry, we suffer. If you really understand that, you also will be able to understand that when the other person is angry, it means that she is suffering. When someone insults you or behaves violently towards you, you have to be intelligent enough to see that the person suffers from his own violence and anger. But we tend to forget … When we see that our suffering and anger are no different from their suffering and anger, we will behave more compassionately.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

There is so much to be angry about every day because life …

3 Things That Are Helping Me Deal with Stress, Pain, and Loss

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“Being on a spiritual path does not prevent you from facing times of darkness; but it teaches you how to use the darkness as a tool to grow.” ~Unknown

Life has not been kind lately.

My aunt passed away in October. She had been suffering from cancer, but her family kept the extent of her illness to themselves, and hence I did not have a chance to see her before she passed away. I felt bad about that.

My father followed her a month later, just after Thanksgiving. He had been ailing from Parkinson’s Disease, but his death as well …

How to Make Anxiety A Lot Less Painful

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“You are not a mess. You are a feeling person in a messy world.” ~Glennon Doyle Melton

Anxiety can be hardwired and genetic. It can be passed down from generation to generation. It can be a result of trauma and high-stress scenarios, including divorce, moving, and death. These things are out of our control, and can be really challenging to work through.

But, anxiety can also come as a result of certain behaviors, lifestyle choices, and beliefs that you have about yourself and the world. And that, my friend, is always within your control.

I want to challenge the …

How Feeling Shame Freed Me from Suffering

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“Be gentle first with yourself if you wish to be gentle with others.” ~Lama Yeshe

It was October, 2012. The U.S. Presidential Election was around the corner. I was paying an unaccustomed amount of attention to political news on TV and to political discussion sites online. At one site in particular, I was eager to become part of the community, to make a good impression, to build a reputation.

To put it mildly, that didn’t work out well.

One evening I was watching an interview with a politician whose name I recognized, but I didn’t know much about him. I …

License to Hurt: What We Really Need When We’re in Pain

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“We’ll light the candle together when she’s ready. For now I’ll trust the darkness for us both.” ~Terri St. Cloud

Over breakfast one morning recently, Jeff and I started reminiscing about past years, and something was said that brought back a painful memory for me. My boss at the time had been unimaginably small-minded. He had hung me out to dry. “I still can’t understand why he did that,” I said.

Jeff looked at me levelly. “You need to get over it, Jan,” he said. “It was years ago.”

Wise advice, without question. The only problem was that I didn’t …

Choose to Shine: Your Smile Is More Powerful Than You Think

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“Shine like the whole Universe is yours.” ~Rumi

I had a revolutionary experience at a grocery store. Yes, a grocery store. I’ll never forget that day.

I believe that some of the most mundane and unimportant places I’ve visited have been the bedrock of my spiritual growth.

There is so much to witness at a store: people frantically trying to load up for the weekend, elderly in their motorized carts, people in line glued to their smart phones, and then of course the workers that 90% of the time seem achingly miserable and sad.

It was like any other day …

Thoughts Aren’t Always Truth

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4 Ways We Resist Life and Cause Ourselves Pain (And How to Stop)

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“When fear wakes up inside, and there is no place to run away or hide from it, consider it a gift. In all the glory of that discomfort, know there is refuge in surrender.” ~Erin Lanahan

When I was a freshman in college, I had a wise English teacher. Through everything he taught, he would always circle back to the theme that “life is a constant cycle of tension and release.”

I heard him say these words over and over, but I didn’t really listen. I wasn’t ready to yet. Still, this simple message always stuck in my memory.

I …

Why Things Happen as They Do

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Finding Freedom in Illness: A Guide to Suffering Less When Sick (Interview & Giveaway)

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UPDATE: The winners for this giveaway include:

  • Naomi
  • KC
  • Lisa Pellegrino
  • Caroline Létourneau
  • Viktor Dmitriv
  • Kristin Kollinger
  • Heather S
  • Erica Lombard
  • Christine
  • Bridget Howe

If you’ve ever been sick for a prolonged period of time, you understand how physically, mentally, and emotionally draining it can be.

Maybe you don’t know what’s causing your illness, or how to treat it, and you’re tired of searching for answers.

Maybe you blame yourself for repressing emotions, not exercising, or otherwise potentially causing your condition; or maybe you don’t hold yourself responsible, but fear that others do.

Maybe you can no longer do the …

Overcoming General and Social Anxiety: There is Hope

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“F-E-A-R has two meanings: ‘Forget Everything And Run’ or ‘Face Everything And Rise.’ The choice is yours.” ~Zig Ziglar

“Face everything and rise.” Good advice, but how do we do that when we feel incapable? Well, I recently discovered an effective tool that we can rely on whenever anxiety comes for a visit. And I just can’t describe how grateful I am for that discovery!

For over ten years I’ve been suffering from general and social anxiety. People who don’t know me well would be surprised to hear that, since I became a master of hiding my feelings. But when …

A Simple Sentence That Helps When You Feel Overwhelmed

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“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Days after the initial divorce from my ex-partner, I wanted to meet two very close friends in the city. I knew they would be loving and supportive and that the experience would be good for me. But I was so grief stricken and overwhelmed with emotion that even leaving the house felt like a monumental effort.

Sitting on the edge of my bed, picturing all the steps it would take me from where I was now to where they were seemed insurmountable. Normally, I would have jumped in …

Why We Can’t Be Happy All the Time

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“Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.” ~Ram Dass

Suffering by definition: the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship. As humans we typically strive for what we perceive the opposite of suffering, happiness: the state of being happy. Of course why wouldn’t you? Nobody wants to suffer.

For many years I looked at the two as separate states of being. I felt if I was happy I would not suffer. Conversely, if I was suffering I could not be happy. It was a simple focus and one I felt was personally achievable. Easy, right? Choose happiness.…

How Pain Can Lead to Pleasure and Why We Should Embrace It

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“The pain you feel today will be the strength you feel tomorrow.” ~Unknown

We all hate to suffer, and avoid suffering at all costs. I’ve gone through great lengths to avoid discomfort, pain, and sorrow.

I stayed with the wrong people to avoid the suffering of letting go; I indulged in tasty, fatty snacks to avoid the suffering of not eating them; and I smoked a pack of cigarettes a day to avoid the suffering involved with quitting.

I stayed in bed for longer than I should to avoid the discomfort of waking up when I needed to. I …