Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Suffering

Is Buddhism Pessimistic?

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Many people think Buddhism is all about suffering, making it seem a real downer. While it’s true that the Buddha acknowledged that life is characterized by suffering, he meant more than just physical pain. He taught us that our mental suffering comes from being attached to our desires and expectations. Ignorance, or a lack of understanding of reality, also plays a part.

The Buddha also warned us that our pleasure-seeking tendencies can lead to disappointment when we realize life’s fleeting nature: “Knowing this truth gives our lives wholeness and peace, as it frees us from the exhausting postures of pretense and denial.” The ultimate aim of following the Buddhist path is not to evade life’s challenges but to confront them with serenity and enhance our inner capabilities. This teaching isn’t a pessimistic approach but a hopeful one, which teaches that we can take control of our lives and find wisdom, compassion, and happiness even in tough times.

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How Thought-Stopping Can Help You Overcome Negative Thinking and Get Unstuck

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To avoid getting trapped in negative thoughts such as “No one will hire me,” “I’m so angry,” or “I’m an imposter,” thought stopping can be a lifesaver. This technique is particularly effective in preventing your mind from fixating on distressing situations. The more frustrated and irate you get, the more likely you are to avoid thinking about it. But then you end up blaming yourself for remaining stuck.

When you catch yourself indulging in unproductive thoughts, immediately shout “STOP!” and shift your focus to a productive task. You can take a small step toward your goal by reading an article, watching a video, or reaching out to a trusted friend for suggestions on how to enhance your situation.

It’s also vital to assess if the negative thought is justified or if there’s anything you can do to improve the situation.

While it’s true that thought-stopping alone may not be adequate to address all causes of being stuck, it can still be a potent tool to help you identify negative thoughts that play repeatedly in your mind. Once you become aware of these thoughts, you can break free from the cycle of negativity and move forward positively by taking small steps to get unstuck.

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Things Will Look Up Soon

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There’ll be days when you’ll feel down in the dumps. You’ll have those days when the band, singer, or ensemble you enjoy won’t suddenly make your anxiety disappear. When the show you’ve been watching won’t fascinate you as much as it did the previous day. When you’ll not feel like being with a loved one.

Feeling helpless is something that all people suffer from time to time. You may become dispassionate or disengaged from the things and people that ground you. The hobbies you care for don’t cheer you up.

Sometimes, it’s just a day that only you can get through, even if you feel nobody understands what you’re going through. Nobody’s going to do your life for you. Hang in there—you’ll soon find ways to deal with it and emerge from what can feel like a hole or a dark tunnel with no end.

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  5. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal

Public Speaking is Traumatizing Vulnerable Students

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For decades, universities have forced presentations and class participation to be integral to students’ grades. Sure, employers are interested not only in graduates’ subject knowledge but also in their ability to communicate, work in teams, problem-solve, build consensus, and so on.

However, public speaking anxiety is too common in college students, particularly those suffering from chronic social anxiety. Some even dread the sheer prospect of raising their hands in class for fear of being judged.

Sadly, our academic institutions aren’t doing enough to support such students. College is, after all, a place to practice in a supportive environment—it’s better for students to confront their fears in a relatively low-stakes classroom setting than in the real world. One lecturer I know of accommodated a nervous student by dismissing everyone else and making her present only to the professor.

Colleges must emphasize that anxiety and fear of public speaking are entirely normal—Mark Twain famously noted, “There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars.” Colleges should assess individual students’ natural ability and teach public speaking as part of university learning, starting with systematic desensitization and conditioning confidence until the students feel they can tackle entire presentations.

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Don’t Be Afraid to Let the Darkness In

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It’s okay to be hurt. It’s okay to be angry or sad.

Fear, anxiety, sadness, and other negative emotions are but a natural response to what’s happening in your life, and you shouldn’t have to deny them. No one goes through life never feeling a negative emotion.

If you have a vicious internal voice—an ‘inner saboteur’—that also scorns you for having a rough time, just tell yourself it’s okay to not be okay. Your emotions aren’t the enemy. Sometimes things are hard because they’re just hard and not because you’re lacking something or you’re not doing enough.

You don’t need to buy into platitudes such as “Look on the sunnier side!” and “Everything happens for a reason!” Being positive isn’t the only correct way to live. In fact, toxic positivity can make you feel disconnected and, eventually, worse.

As long as you deal with them healthily, negative sentiments are okay—no need to avoid unpleasant realities. Stop buying into them, being attached to them, and inviting them back. Leaning into—not suppressing—pain, regret, sadness, and fear can bring significant benefits. The road to the good life is paved with the full range of the human experience—tears and furrowed brows, smiles and amusement, and all.

Idea for Impact: Don’t be afraid to let the darkness in. No need to attach so much meaning to what arises. No need to identify with your emotions. Allow yourself to experience the emotions. In time, they’ll move on through.

Seek little moments of compassion, inspiration, calmness, or altruism. These have the power to inspire and give hope.

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  4. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be
  5. How to … Break the Complaint Habit

How to… Reframe Negative Thoughts

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Modest self-doubt is normal when you’re analyzing your past or thinking about the future. But it’s easy to give in to negative chatter in your head and get lost in a mental house of mirrors. There’s no cognitive off switch for brooding, but a little internal coaching can help quiet this voice.

Start by recognizing negative thoughts and ask yourself—is this useful? Or is it not useful? Recognize that negative talk is unhelpful. Bring your focus back to self-compassion—let go of the judgments you hold about yourself, your body, and your moods.

Whenever your mind squawks, hone in and try to identify the exact emotion you’re experiencing. Ask yourself, “What’s at the core of what’s going on here?” Instead of using a broad label like “worry” or “stress,” drill down deeper into those feelings. Are you feeling vulnerable, or are you anxious about an outcome?

Reassess those pesky thoughts that play on a loop in your mind. Catch yourself embracing insistent expressions such as “always,” “never,” and “forever.” The more you attend to such notions about yourself, the more you believe in them, regardless of whether they’re true. Before you go into a negative spin, ask yourself if you really are failing at everything and if you’re always too busy to find time for your loved ones.

Idea for Impact: Rewrite Your Negative Self-Talk Script

If dwelling on critical moments is dragging you down, it’s time to take action. Rather than fault yourself for the swirl of thoughts, tell yourself you’re troubleshooting, planning, and preparing. Get on with the things you want to do. The momentum of positive emotions builds up as soon as you take action. If dwelling on critical moments is dragging you down, it’s time to take action

[Re-scripting your self-talk (“I can rehearse this presentation and ask a friend for feedback”) can help you prepare for any challenges and stop worrying about them incessantly.

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  2. The Power of Negative Thinking
  3. Cope with Anxiety and Stop Obsessive Worrying by Creating a Worry Box
  4. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal
  5. This May Be the Most Potent Cure for Melancholy

Thought Suppression is Counterproductive

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You can’t make a bad thought go away by trying not to think about it.

Pushing away a thought works, but for a little while. Short-term relief is often worse than no relief, sometimes exacerbating the very emotions you’re hoping to veer off.

Most crutches of choice (drugs, alcohol, tobacco, barbiturates, shopping, or high-carbohydrate foods) offer transitory comfort. The immediate pleasure often gives way to long-term despair, which causes repeated use of the same agent. The consequence is addiction. The same is valid for thought suppression.

Studies have revealed that the more you suppress a thought, the stronger its recoil. For instance, smokers suppressing the thought of cigarettes report that the appeal of smoking comes rushing back with even greater power when they let their guard down. Holding back your thoughts will actually make you think about them more once the period of active suppression is over. In other words, suppressing a thought increases your attachment to it.

Persistence creates resistance; the more you try to push thoughts out, the bigger they get. Further, the fleeting relief of thought suppression pushes you away from more effective and lasting approaches, such as gratitude, acceptance, and forgiveness.

Idea for Impact: Suppress Your Thoughts about Suppression

In a world obsessed with positive thinking, many of us have been conditioned to be so averse to “negative emotions” that we don’t recognize them, much less acknowledge them, or give ourselves permission to feel and process them. Thought suppression causes more stress and anxiety than if you confront what you’re trying to forget.

  • Replace unwanted thoughts with thoughts that focus on your goals (e.g., “It feels better to eat a delicious fruit than it does to wolf down a s’more topped with melted chocolate.”)
  • Create an if-then to help you not block unwanted thoughts out but instead plan what you really need to do to act on temptations. Your plans can disrupt the connection between the thought and giving in to temptation. Over time, the thoughts will fade on their own.

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The Secret to Happiness in Relationships is Lowering Your Expectations

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Happiness depends not on how well things are going, but on whether things are going better or worse than expected. (A case in point: under-promising and over-delivering is a sure way to build customer loyalty.)

Right-size what you can expect from others. You’d be happier to accept other people’s difficult behaviors when you expect less from them. The instant you feel disappointed because another person didn’t come through for you, remind yourself, “It isn’t for me to have those expectations on her.”

The definitive purpose of moderating your expectations of other people isn’t to give them some sort of pass. Instead, it is to help you take off your rose-colored spectacles and appreciate the being-as-is. This change of attitude helps you moderate the constant frustration—even anger—from those around you.

Idea for Impact: If you have high expectations of other people and they disappoint you, you’re giving them permission to dictate how you’ll feel. That’s a lot of power to give to others.

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Don’t Be a Prisoner of the Hurt Done to You

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The Irish philosopher and poet John O’Donohue writes in Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong (1998,)

Forgiveness is one of the really difficult things in life. The logic of receiving hurt seems to run in the direction of never forgetting either the hurt or the hurter. When you forgive, some deeper, divine generosity takes over. When you can forgive, then you are free. When you cannot forgive, you are a prisoner of the hurt done to you. If you are really disappointed in someone and you become embittered, you become incarcerated inside that feeling. Only the grace of forgiveness can break the straight logic of hurt and embitterment. It gives you a way out, because it places the conflict on a completely different level. In a strange way, it keeps the whole conflict human. You begin to see and understand the conditions, circumstances, or weakness that made the other person act as they did.

Forgiveness begins with recognizing that the pain wrought upon you by someone else stems from her own deep suffering.

In other words, forgiveness is opening up to the insight that, while you are the victim of another who has caused you some suffering, she herself is also a victim of suffering. A set of circumstances—often beyond your understanding—have influenced her to perpetuate the hurt upon you.

When you adopt this enlightened state, you’re not condoning or justifying aggression, abuse, or violence. Instead, you’re responding with such kindness as to equip you with a substantial emotional breakthrough towards giving up resentment, harsh judgment, and revenge against the person who caused hurt.

Responding with the understanding that suffering stems from suffering can progressively offer you emotional freedom from the second-order suffering that comes from replaying that hurt repeatedly.

Idea for Impact: Forgiveness is for you—not for anyone else. Append your grievance story to remind youself of the heroic choice of realizing that forgiveness was hard—but you found a way to forgive anyway. Holding onto the anger and resentment will, then, no longer carry the same weight on you.

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Change Your Perspective, Change Your Reactions

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From the eighth-century Buddhist philosopher Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryavatara (“Entrance to the Path of Awakening,”) a translation from Stephen Batchelor’s A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life (1979:)

Where would I possibly find enough leather
With which to cover the surface of the earth?
But just leather on the soles of my shoes
Is equivalent to covering the earth with it
 
Likewise it is not possible for me
To restrain the external course of things
But should I restrain this mind of mine
What would be the need to restrain all else?

A powerful reminder that you can’t magically make the whole world and its people run smooth and easy, but you can reorient your heart and mind to change your perspective and endure the bumps that you’ll encounter.

Idea for Impact: If something isn’t to your liking, change your liking or find something else of your liking. The willingness to adjust is perhaps the single most critical human faculty.

Wondering what to read next?

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  2. What the Buddha Taught About Restraining and Dealing with Anger
  3. Begin with Yourself
  4. Learn to Manage Your Negative Emotions and Yourself
  5. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be