Ep. 66 - Pain is Inevitable, Suffering is Optional; Relearning How to Think For Yourself

"Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional." This quote, often attributed to Haruki Murakami, is rooted in the Buddhist parable of the second arrow.

The Buddha says, “In life, we can’t always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is optional.”

Tara Brach explains the teaching like this: "If you get struck by an arrow, do you then shoot another arrow into yourself?"

It's this second arrowing that causes us so much emotional suffering, and what many of us don't realize is that we have control of the second arrow. The first arrow is the original pain we experience as a result of a circumstance in life.

In this diary-style episode, I share a raw audio of me processing how we can use this awareness to lighten our emotional load. So many of us are buckling under the weight of our emotional suffering, not realizing how much of what we carry is self-created.

In this episode, I help you see where you might be creating suffering for yourself, so you can choose whether you want to carry it into the future or set it down.

When we lighten our suffering, we give ourselves the chance to enjoy the human experience rather than buckling under the weight of it.

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Original music by JMW

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1:1 mindset coaching isn’t just for athletes or select special people. It’s for anyone who wants to ask more of themselves but knows their thinking is getting in the way.

If this is work you’re excited to do, sign up for my free offering (a 90-minute deep dive coaching call) so you can experience firsthand how managing your mind can bring more peace, happiness, and success into your life.

To book your free call, visit KariWatterson.com.

At the end of the day, we have one life.

How do you want to live yours?

Think about it.

And then, let's get to work.

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Let's connect:
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You are listening to the End of the Day podcast with Gary Watterson. This is episode 66. Hello, hello everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here. This week's episode is slightly different.

Speaker 1: 0:33

I have been experimenting lately with different ways to share content. I've been leaving myself a lot of WhatsApp voice messages. So, basically, if I'm walking somewhere or if I'm working, if I'm just going from one room to the other and I happen to have a thought that I don't want to lose, I might just whip out my phone, open WhatsApp and leave myself a voice message so I don't lose it. Sometimes, when I'm listening to a podcast, I'll hear somebody say something in such a way that I know it's going to be valuable for me in the future, and so I'll stop the recording, open WhatsApp and leave myself just a quick blurb about what it was that the speaker said that captured my interest and how it might connect with a concept that I've mulling around in my head or with a coaching insight. And so, because I've been doing that lately, it's been a lot easier for me to put together some short pieces of content, and I decided that once in a while, I'd like to share them with you in the raw form, which is basically like a processing entry or a reflective entry, a diary entry. That's what this episode is. The audio isn't perfect, but I believe that you'll be able to hear it and hopefully the message will come through. Now, one of the things I noticed as I was listening to the playback of this episode was that I did talk about Buddhism and Enlightenment, and I'm not sure I actually got it quite right, and initially I thought, you know, I better do a bunch of research. But what I decided actually was there's room to have a corrective conversation later in another episode. For sure, as a matter of fact, I have a guest in mind that I would love to bring on to the podcast, who I believe would have some really interesting insight to share. In this episode, though, the focus isn't really on Enlightenment, the focus is on suffering and how we add so much suffering to our lives unnecessarily. My hope is, by sharing this episode of me, connecting dots for me will help you see that you don't have to carry so much emotional weight with you. Okay, all right, my friends, thank you so much for listening on.

Speaker 1: 3:26

With the episode, wednesday, january 25th, I was thinking about how some people say they consider toxic positivity as a message that you should be happy all the time and not feel emotions. And I think anytime that we think about things a certain way like that, we paint a broad brush to discount something that maybe we're struggling with or that we sense that other people struggle with. We're given away our brain or the power to think for ourselves. Again, buddha says Enlightenment is the absence of suffering. And then they say pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. So the absence of suffering doesn't mean no pain, but it does mean an awareness that there is the pain and then there is the stuff that we pile on top of the pain. That leads us to the suffering part.

Speaker 1: 4:47

Enlightenment is the absence of suffering. This recognition of, I think it flows in with the acceptance of what is. When we're not arguing with what is, we're not wishing, what is presently in our lives isn't. Of course we're human and we might start, we'll instinctively maybe lean that way. But when we are able to recognize that's what's happening and we can even choose to argue with it for a while, we have to maybe get it out of our system, but maybe set a timeframe for how long we're going to argue with it, because we recognize that the more we continue to argue with it, actually we're perpetuating our own suffering. So, whatever the situation is, if it's a medical diagnosis, instead of arguing the fact that diagnosis was made, we say what is actually present right now, and present is there, is this diagnosis. So if enlightenment is the absence of suffering and pain is inevitable, suffering is optional Then enlightenment is the absence of the optional suffering that we often pile on ourselves.

Speaker 1: 6:11

When we pile on the suffering, it's like we're piling things on our back and eventually our knees will bow and we'll start sagging under the weight of it. So what if we could develop the skill of not adding so much suffering, catching ourselves when we're adding the suffering to our pain? If we're looking at the visual of a person like one more thing added to their back and their knees are buckling. But what if we stopped doing that and we actually started taking things off of that and the person is standing straighter and taller still with the pain or whatever is going on in the daily lives, with the is-ness of the circumstance right, how much more bandwidth and energy capacity would we have to deal with that part because we're not buckling under the suffering that we normally add on and again the suffering is arguing with reality.

Speaker 1: 7:12

This arguing with reality is arguing with the presence of our emotions, specific emotions. When a client, they say, understood she was very self-aware as she was verbally processing and she was saying I know I'm upset at being upset right now over this thing from the past that is gone and I cannot control, so very self-aware. She knows she's upset at being upset and she knows that's arguing with reality and she's verbally processing it through. She also knows that she's human. She knows that she's going to have human emotions and there was something that triggered her into feeling emotions and she was curious and wondering why. But also feeling the weight of those emotions right, also knowing in the future she doesn't want to carry those emotions. And so that is the suffering. But she's aware of that. And once you have awareness of what you're actually doing with these additional thoughts, with the argument with reality, once you're aware of what that creates for you, you can have compassion for the weight of it and your past stuff. Who didn't know that that was actually a weight that we had put on ourselves so unnecessarily? But yet we still move through the years and the days and powered through and here we still are. So that person underwent so much.

Speaker 1: 8:30

But what if we could now introduce some levity into the situation by removing that suffering? Can you stand up a little taller? Would you be able to have more energy and capacity and bandwidth and time and attention to be able to focus on the thing at hand, the future you want to create? So when you notice yourself painting over a word with a broad brush like toxic positivity, there's a reason you're doing that, no problem. But if it's preventing you from actually gaining more of that thing like happiness, this is when I love to explore what actually happiness actually means to me. This is where I love to break things down, decoupling things in my head, so that I can give myself a shot to feel like I'm thinking for myself and not following what other people are saying, including people like me.

Speaker 1: 9:31

Break things down. If I'm saying something, don't just take my sentence. I mean, sometimes we cling on to others because that's a place to start, and to me that's what I did. Those were like little lifelines until I was at the space in the period of my journey where I could say so grateful for that. And now I have capacity, now I can see where I've got some room here that I can work on, and I actually want to find out for myself what's going on so that I can decide what I want to believe about that or how I want to think of that, what my view on that is. Moving forward. This is the part of reclaiming ourselves, reclaiming what we think, reclaiming our views, because now we feel like we've given our permission to have that, those views, and being okay with that. That it's not with the crowd, right? This is where we feel like we're actually living more and more true to ourselves. This is where we feel like we're belonging more and more to ourselves. This is where we feel more and more comfortable with our own skin. All right, my friends, have a fantastic day.

Speaker 1: 10:50

Music, one-on-one mindset coaching isn't just for athletes or select people. It's for anyone who wants to ask more of themselves but knows their thinking is getting in the way. Uncover what's holding you back it's often not what you think. Learn tools and concepts to challenge your thinking and regulate your emotions so you can set goals you want and be able to do the belief work to meet them, rather than playing small and at the effect of your unchallenged beliefs. In your unchallenged mind.

Speaker 1: 11:26

It's not about following the crowd. It's about giving yourself permission to think outside the box, to find inspiration and processes that resonate with your brain, so you can finally feel what it's like to live a life that feels true and meaningful for you. If this is work you're excited to do, you'll want to sign up for my free offering a 90-minute deep dive coaching call so you can experience firsthand what it would be like to work together and how mindset coaching can change your life. To book a call, email me at kerry at kerrywatersoncom, that's K-A-R-I at K-A-R-I-W-A-T-T-E-R-S-O-Ncom, with the subject line Book 90 Minute Call. At the end of the day, we have one life. How do you want to live yours? How do you want to show up? Think about it and then let's get to work.