We are forced to choose between pain with stress or pain without stress.
Fear of pain, along with our futile efforts to avoid it, is a great source of stress. Acceptance of pain’s inevitability, however, lightens the weight of our load on life’s journey. We’ll always receive pain, but accepting that at the least relieves much of our undue stress.
Our own worst enemy
Here’s a good example.
Say you have to make a decision, but you fear an extremely negative response from at least one person. That person may feel slighted or negatively impacted by your choice. Others may be happy with your choice, but that doesn’t matter. Instead, you are obsessed over someone else’s potential unhappiness as the result of your decision.
In fact, you’re working hard to find the decision that makes everyone happy. It’s a decision you’ll never find because it cannot possibly exist.
Despite the impossibility of making everyone happy, you consistently deny reality and stress out over your decision. You can see their angry faces now — all in your head.
Then you may ask yourself how far you have come along in life trying to please everyone.
“Almost nowhere” would be the most accurate response.
Roll with Ivan Drago’s punches
The pain is inevitable, the stress is not. We cannot control the responses of others, but we can control our own.
And we can take the punches the way Rocky Balboa did.