Episode 041: Your Suffering Isn't Helping
We convince ourselves that suffering is a necessary part of life. Pain is a part of life; suffering is optional. Listen and learn how to stop unnecessary suffering.
+ Read the Transcript
Today I want to talk about how we all engage in the act of suffering. Suffering is something that we get because of our inner critics. Our inner critics, or our Monger, as I like to call her because she uses propaganda. Our Monger convinces us that if we're suffering, at least we're doing something. This shows up in big ways and little ways all day long. A big way would be, let's say you're doing a job search. You've lost your job, and so you have to do a job search, and job searching sucks. It's hard to do a job search.
You do it for a little while, and then you decide, okay, I've submitted my resumes, or I've made some phone calls, and I've made some headway this morning. So I'm going to enjoy my afternoon, but the whole afternoon that you've taken off, your Monger is just hammering you and hammering you and hammering you. You convince yourself that's the price you have to pay. That's the price of doing business. I've taken the day off. Therefore, I'm going to get hammered by my Monger because that's the suffering I deserve for not being the perfect person.
It also shows up in little ways. For me, it shows up in, I might be procrastinating on doing a certain task, and so my Monger just starts beating me up for all the procrastination, and I think to myself, well, I'm not doing the task, but I am suffering. This is the cost, the price we pay for not doing whatever we think we should be doing.
The suffering is unnecessary. It's the idea of when you decide, oh, I'm going to get up in the morning, and I'm going to set my alarm, and I'm going to start working out every morning. The alarm goes off, and you're supposed to get up and get dressed and workout, but you hit the snooze alarm. Instead of going back to sleep, you lay there and punish yourself for the fact that you haven't gotten up. You're Monger says you didn't get up, so you're such a loser. You don't go to sleep, and you're not working out. You're just in this weird, limbo, middle area of suffering. The more we can cut out that weird middle area of suffering, the happier we're going to be.
What happens is we have to get in the habit of recognizing this suffering isn't necessary. I don't need to be beating myself up here. I've made the decision I'm going to sleep, so I'm going to sleep. If you can't get back to sleep, you need to get up and go work out or get up and do something. Forcing yourself to suffer is unnecessary, and that's just making ourselves more miserable. We do it all the time.
When I started paying attention to this concept of how often I engage in suffering, it was radical to recognize that I engage in suffering, even from the idea of, "Oh, I should go to the grocery store." Then all day long, I'll be playing in my head, "You should go to the grocery store, you should go to the grocery store." And I don't want to go to the grocery store, and I don't have time to go to the grocery store that day, and instead of just saying, "You know what? This suffering isn't necessary. You're not going to the grocery store today. You're going to go tomorrow." I hammer myself repeatedly that a more responsible person or a more on top of it person or a more perfect person would have time to go to the grocery store and do it all today. The more I've recognized the suffering isn't necessary, the happier I'm going to be.
When you hear this idea of, hey, suffering isn't necessary, you're like, "Duh. I know this. I know that suffering isn't necessary. I hate that I do this to myself. It's just so annoying, and I wish I didn't hammer myself all the time." We get the idea that it's stupid in so many ways that we're doing it to ourselves. What happens, and the tricky part about this whole concept of Monger and inner critic and self-ridicule is that it feels, like a warm, cozy, really itchy sweater. Because there's a part of it that feels warm and cozy and familiar and comfortable, our Monger lulls us into this safety net of comfort and support, and we feel like, "Yes, I should be suffering. You're right." We kind of become those little minions that were in the box in the Toy Story Movie that said, "Yes, master. Yes." We become that tranced person based on what our Monger is telling us, and that's the warm, cozy, fabulous part of the sweater.
Then what happens, especially as we start getting more aware of it, it starts getting itchy, and we're like, "Wait a minute. I feel uncomfortable, and I don't like how this is feeling," but we're still stuck in the trance. We don't realize that we can take off the sweater. We don't have to wear the sweater, so even though it's warm and cozy, it's itchy, and so we don't want that in our lives. That's the super challenge of dealing with this idea that you don't have to suffer.
It's recognizing when are you wearing that sweater? When are you in that trance of, oh, a good person does this, and I should be that we are justifying and proving and defending and atoning for everything we're doing. When we get stuck in that space of I, have to justify why I'm doing this. I'm going to lay here in bed miserable and justify why I'm not getting out of bed. We get stuck in that warm, cozy sweater feeling. Then it gets itchy, and we're annoyed because now we've lost 45 minutes of sleep, and we didn't get to work out. All we did was suffer for nothing.
To kind of start building awareness of when are you stuck in that trance? When are you wearing that sweater? When are you stuck in the itchiness and saying to yourself, "I don't have to suffer here."? There's no need to suffer. Then the biggest thing is to choose to decide: I'm going to get up, and I'm going to go workout, or I'm going to get up, and I'm going to enjoy my cup of coffee because I'm up 20 minutes early. Or I'm not going to work out today, and instead, I'm going to take a walk at the end of the day because, you know what, working out in the morning, that's not what I like to do, so I can't do it in the morning. I'm going to find out another time. Then find another time.
Making a choice of, I'm going to sleep, and I'm going to enjoy every minute of these 45 minutes of sleep because I went to bed late and I'm exhausted. See you later, Monger. I'm going to go to sleep. You may have to repeat that five or six times over five or six days before you get to the point of making the decision and not getting stuck in the trance of the Monger.
A few episodes ago, I talked about your biggest fan, and that is the idea of when we recognize that we're suffering to kind of call on that biggest fan to be like, okay, what do we do here? How should I be treating myself here? Because suffering is not something our biggest fan would want us to do. You don't need to be suffering—bottom line.
+ Weekly Ritual Challenge
One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.
This week's ritual: Running Errands? SLOW DOWN
When you enter a grocery store or run an errand that you have to do where you're running in and out of the car and being manic, as we tend to do when we're running errands, every time you shut the door to your car as you get out to go do something whether it's the grocery store or CVS or Target or whatever, to remind yourself, "I can slow down." And slow down.