Unnecessary Suffering

In life, sometimes suffering is inevitable. However, it is a waste of time and energy when we cause our own suffering.

How do we do it?

By pretending we know everything or should know everything.

Unknown makes us uneasy. Therefore, we try to guess about events and people. Either we tap into how we feel about something or listen to experts.

The truth is that life is unknown and its outcome depends on a large number of variables, many of which we are not aware of or have any control of.

When we do not hear a response from a co-worker, our ego picks one worst case scenario: he/she is not supportive or not caring.

Running with this assumption our thoughts change our mood, and keeps us in a state of anger. After a day or so we realize that the co-worker was dealing with an emergency and our buying into that assumption was a waste of our time.

We hear the news with doom and gloom predictions. We buy into it and we are fearful and miserable for days.

It is easy to buy into fear, and become addicted to constant fear and stress.

When we question sources of our fear and observe how negatively it impacts our NOW, we start paying less attention to those sources: be it the news or ourselves when we are tired and are energetically drained.

Look at the source of your worries/fears in the past month, which ones did not come true?

Copyright @2022 by Shervin Hojat