Not a single person is immune to emotional pain. We all feel down or sad about something from time to time. That pain might fade away eventually, but there are steps we can take to minimize it. You don’t have to suffer needlessly.
Consider what is hurting you. Where is the pain coming from?
Sometimes, the pain comes from an inescapable reality. But other times, it is simply the product of our thinking.
You might be imagining something terrible that is happening in the future. But it’s not happening! It might never happen! And yet, you are experiencing as a real source of suffering. Perhaps you are anxious about a thing that already happened and cannot be changed, so it’s not worth considering anymore. It’s a thought that is harming you, but that comes from your mind.
Another common problem is focusing only on the negative. If we see only the bad in each situation, then we are maximizing the pain we feel whenever anything happens. If we fail to recognize good things, our life appears to be full of failures, mistakes, and hurts.
However, it’s not true.
Right now, take a moment and consider everything you have to be grateful for. Even when things appear dire, there are blessings to be counted – even if it’s just the fact that you are still around.
We all have good things, relationships, skills, opportunities, victories to celebrate. A practice of gratitude can help you shift your mindset and reduce the suffering you cause yourself by focusing on the negatives.
Consider the good things in your life. This doesn’t mean that you will never be hurt, of course. Negatives continue to exist. We face problems. We lose.
But we can minimize our suffering. We can stop worrying about things that are not real, that are only products of our thinking. We can stop viewing the world as a huge pile of negativity, instead learning to recognize the good along with the bad and finding that we are much better off than we perhaps believed.
“The key to being happy is knowing you have the power to choose what to accept and what to let go.”
