The Difference Between Pain and Suffering | Ep 250
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The second that we stop resisting the pain and we take ownership over our thoughts and we start forcing ourselves to ask ourselves better questions, even if it means you just write them down and read them, then we start freeing ourselves from that emotional suffering. What's up guys, welcome back to Build and today I want to talk about a topic that has been very much on my mind, which is the difference between pain and suffering.

So, transparently, I wanted to talk about this topic because it's what I've been thinking about. Because I'll be...

You know, I'm just gonna be completely transparent. You know, I try really hard with my content to share things that are going well, what's working, stories when things aren't going well, but I think sometimes the hardest thing is to share present day when things don't feel like they're going well. And I'm definitely in that spot right now. Like, I find myself to be a very resilient person.

But I have just felt really down. I just felt down. I just haven't felt good. I haven't felt like myself in about a month. And it's actually not from anything involved with the business or my personal life. It's actually just health stuff. And because of that, I have just felt like I've been in pain. I haven't been comfortable. And it's been probably the hardest time that I've had in a while just trying to

uh, fuck my mood, follow the plan because I can't follow every plan. Um, because I don't feel good and it's not good for my body based on where I'm at right now. I was thinking about this morning because I was talking to my husband, Alex, and I was like, I haven't been making content because I don't feel good. And I don't know what to say because I feel like I'm kind of in this negative space. And he was like, I feel like you have a lot to say. You just probably don't want to say it. Right. And

I was reflecting after we talked because I tend to be the optimistic person who can pull people out. I'm the rock for everybody. And I just lately have felt like I haven't been the best rock for myself. And when I was sitting there thinking, why does this feel so hard right now? This lesson that one of my old mentors taught me kind of just popped back into my head, which was,

the difference between pain and suffering, and that we can feel emotional pain, but that we inflict emotional suffering upon ourselves. And a lot of people think that pain and suffering are the same thing. In fact, they don't even know the difference. And so when I was sitting there, after I was talking to my husband, I sat there and I asked myself, like, are you in pain or are you causing yourself suffering? And I said,

I'm causing myself suffering. I was thinking about all the thoughts going through my head. I was thinking of how I'm talking to myself lately, the things I'm thinking, and I've just let my mind go in that direction. And I thought it'd be useful to share because one thing I tell people a lot is that I struggle with the same things that you guys do. I still go through the same things, like more success, more money. It doesn't make this shit go away. But I think it's another thing to share it when it's actually happening and

The question I asked myself today was, how could I make this into something that's good? And the only thing that popped in my head was to share it with people because I try to be very vulnerable, but I'll be honest, like I just, oftentimes I don't go into a dark place because I've worked so hard mentally. But I think it's been very challenging for me because I tend to not have things string on this long, like circumstances,

business situations, relationship situations, like all things like I've overcome a lot. I think that in the last month, I've just had like thing after thing physically and I just feel worn out. And I had to ask myself like, okay, I'm asking myself the wrong questions. I'm asking myself, why is this happening?

When is this going to stop? Is this ever going to stop? Am I ever going to feel better? Am I going to be one of those people that's sick all the time? Like, am I ever going to feel like myself again? What if, you know, because of this, I can't ever work the same like I've worked for so long. What if I can't work out again? What if I can't be the wife to my husband? And

I've been asking myself all these questions and then judging myself and blaming myself and saying, gosh, I'm probably no fun right now. I'm sure like nobody wants to be around me. You know, I feel bad, like I'm not like super upbeat for my team. I feel like I'm not there and like encouraging to the people around me as much. I have all these things that are like pending in the business and I don't have the discretion or effort to focus on them. And so what I realized is I've just been creating this

this sphere of suffering, as I call it. I'm sitting in a sphere of suffering. And I wanted to walk you guys through what I kind of wrote down for myself in how I need to get out of it. Like my thoughts about it, as well as what I need to do to get out of suffering and just experience the pain, yes, but not have to choose to suffer on top of the pain. Because I think, you know,

When you feel pain, pain's inevitable. You know, when you lose somebody, when you get sick, when you fail, when things just don't go your way, and when they keep not going your way despite your efforts, that's pain. But suffering, suffering is that you then get mad about the pain. You then get frustrated about the pain. You then get depressed about the pain. You then get mad about the pain.

And I think that's the difference between pain and suffering. And so oftentimes what we do is we take these practical situations like something bad happening, getting sick, having something happen at work, et cetera, and then we turn them into situations where we suffer because we create all this emotion around it. And I kind of want to break down for you guys why pain isn't the problem and how to stop suffering because, you know,

I think I used to suffer more when it came to business or relationships or anything, but this is a new area for me. And I think sometimes when you're suffering in a way that you haven't suffered before, it's harder for you to remember the tools that have helped you in other areas of life and that those tools transfer domains. And so this is me reminding myself and also hoping that I can add value to you.

So as I was writing down, what is emotional pain? I wrote down a couple of things. Pain is part of life. Pain is being human. Life is 50% pain, 50% pleasure. Pain is normal. Pain is supposed to happen.

You can't go through life trying to avoid pain because if you avoid pain, you also avoid feeling good. You also avoid pleasure. You also avoid joy. And you play small. You avoid risks. You stop pushing yourself. And before you know it, you are in the sphere of comfort, right? And you're playing a comfortable life, but not a meaningful life. And the thing is, is that pain's not the issue, right? It's just your brain saying, hey, something happened that I didn't expect and I didn't want.

But it is temporary. It will come, it will peak, and it will go if you let it. And the real problem isn't pain. The real problem is suffering and the fact that we create this suffering for ourselves. And so what is suffering? Suffering is not feeling pain. Suffering is what happens when we don't just feel the pain, but we feed the pain. Pain says I made a mistake. Suffering says I'm a failure and I'm never gonna get this right.

Pain says, this hurts. Suffering says, maybe it's going to hurt forever. When I really think about it, suffering is when you take a painful moment and then you turn it into a story. You turn it into a story about yourself. You turn it into a story about other people, about the world. It's your judgment of the pain. And the worst part of this is that the story is not true, right? But it feels true because we stay isolated, telling ourselves it over and over and over again. I have a friend and she wants...

talked about the concept of clean versus dirty pain. So she says, clean pain is just the raw emotion itself. It's like grief, disappointment, frustration, anger. It's natural. And if you let yourself feel it, it will pass. All feelings pass whether we want them to or not. That's why you don't stay happy forever. You don't stay joyful forever. You also don't stay mad or disappointed or frustrated forever. But dirty pain is all the unnecessary suffering that we add on top of it.

It's blaming ourselves. It's playing victim. It's overthinking. And it's making something mean something more than it actually does.

And we create that suffering because we don't want to accept the pain. We resist the pain. We try to push it away. We try to avoid it. We try to numb the distractions. And the irony of it is that it just makes it worse. Honestly, this is what I've been doing to myself over the last couple of weeks is I realized that I've been telling myself these stories that aren't serving me. And

Maybe some of them are true, right? Maybe some of the stories that I'm telling myself are true, but the question is, does it make me feel better to keep reliving them or telling myself them over and over again? Probably not. And are they all true? Probably not. If once you realize that, you realize that you don't have to keep wasting time feeling bad about things that don't actually matter, right? Because suffering is optional. And if we want to figure out how to stop suffering, then we have to stop resisting pain.

And this is what I wrote down for myself as the three things that I need to do and that maybe you can do if you feel like you're suffering with something right now, it doesn't have to be the same thing, to get out of that headspace. The first one is to stop resisting it. Most suffering comes from resisting emotions instead of just feeling them, right? Like pain, if we think about it, it's really like feels like this big wave that comes and it rises and it rises, but then it falls and then it feels relieving.

But the thing is, is that when you fight it, you make it stick around longer than it actually needs to. And it's funny because the lesson that I think I've had to learn over and over and over again in my life is that of acceptance, that of leaning into pain, that of allowing. And I think that

You know, it's funny is I was in the shower earlier this morning and I was sitting there and I was thinking and I was just like, why does this feel so bad? Why does this feel so terrible? Why? Why can't I get out of this headspace? And, you know, I know I'm in physical pain, but I don't want to be an emotional pain, too. And especially not even emotional pain, but emotional suffering. And as I was sitting there, this word just popped into my mind and it was just like, accept it.

And I was like, "Ugh, why everything always goes back to this?" Like every time I feel this sense of suffering, I feel this sense of anxiety, I have this something that's really bugging me, it's getting to me. It's not because of the thing, it's because I don't accept that it's happening. I wanna change it. And maybe if you're like me,

You have the power to change a lot in your life and you have the power to change a lot of circumstances. You have a lot of power to change the people that are around you, the environment around you, the state of your business, the state of your relationships. Like in most areas of my life, I feel very powerful and I feel like I have a lot of power and it's not a problem. I use it for good and I use it to make my life and other people's lives better. But there's some things we can't control.

And so that tool that works in so many areas of our life, it just doesn't work in every area. It doesn't work in every situation. And so I just took a big deep breath and I was like, I've got to just sit with it. It's not going to kill me. And I think sometimes we just have to say that to ourselves, like, this won't kill me. This won't kill me. I'm not going to die from this. And when I stop fearing the emotion and fearing the pain,

I recognize that I'm also not controlled by it any longer. It feels like the suffering, maybe doesn't completely go away, but it subsides a little bit, at least long enough for me to do something about it, for me to do something to make myself feel better, for me to get into motion, for me to have a more clear thought, for me to think something that is useful rather than demeaning. And so the next time that maybe you feel like you're suffering, I would encourage you to

To have your own moment where you realize that you don't need to run from it. You can just sit with it.

It's not going to kill you. The physical pain won't kill you. The emotional pain won't kill you. Whatever it is, right? And I'm not talking about like some severe physical pain, right? Okay, to be clear, like it's me speaking from my own personal experience right now. Like it's not going to kill me. But it's just very uncomfortable. You know, when we're sick, we don't feel good. When something goes wrong with our bodies, this can be the same as a mental and emotional pain. Like something goes wrong in our business or relationship or, you know, we're confronted with something that really scares us.

I've had a lot of these situations in my life come up where I've recognized that I have to accept and allow them. But it's funny because I think oftentimes everyone has like a core lesson that they have to learn in life. And I think I've just recognized that mine over and over and over again in every different area of my life has always been acceptance. And I've realized that so much of the pain I've had in my life, not pain, and so much of the suffering I've had in my life has just been from not accepting things.

And again, I think it's because the tool of control, the tool of power is so useful in so many areas of life, but then it's just so harmful in others. And we try and try to do the thing until we realize that we can't do this thing the same way that we do everything else. And it's actually a completely opposite approach that will work there.

So what helps me next, right? And what I wrote down I'm going to do is I have to separate my circumstances from my thoughts. One of the most important things that I've learned is that circumstances are neutral, but our thoughts create our experience, right? Take the example, like you fail at something. Okay, cool. That's just a fact. But if then you say, I suck and I'm never going to succeed, that's what creates the suffering. Maybe you fall down and you scrape your knee and you're like, ow, that hurts, right?

That's a fact. But then if you say, oh, is it never going to heal? How long is it going to hurt? Is it going to bleed through my pants? Like that's what creates suffering. It's like typically how it works is a circumstance triggers a thought.

that thought creates a feeling. That feeling then drives us into some kind of action, then the action creates the result. And it's this self-perpetuating circle, right? What helps me is to separate my circumstances from my thoughts and to, I would say, like upgrade my thoughts is my first step that I take. So for example, today,

I was like, okay, let's look at all the nasty thoughts that I'm thinking, which is like, you're going to feel terrible forever. You know, you're going to be a terrible wife because you're no fun right now. You know, your employees are going to get sick of the fact that you're not upbeat and the performance of the business is going to suffer. You're a bad friend because you don't want to hang out with anybody.

All these thoughts, right? I took them and I just wrote down more helpful thoughts. Okay. Your husband loves you and this might be hard for him as well, but he will support you and you guys will get through this together. And maybe it will even be better for your relationship and make it stronger. Your friends, if they are mad at you for not wanting to do things or don't like the fact that you are taking more alone time right now, then they're not your real friends if they don't support that. That was just a fact.

Maybe my team will feel slighted that I'm not as supportive or available right now, but maybe also this is a great chance for them to step up and them to step up because I've stepped back. It's funny because even just reading those thoughts, I like feel relieved saying it out loud. And I really would challenge you to do this because it's such a helpful exercise because you realize that the upgraded thoughts feel much more true than the thoughts that just default come into my mind.

And I really think that if you can change and you can upgrade your thoughts, it really just allows everything else to shift. And it starts to feel better because I also believe the upgraded thoughts. I'm like, no, that is much more likely to happen. Because the next question is, I look at the old thoughts, I look at the new thoughts, and I think like, which one has the highest likelihood of occurring or of being true?

And then I realized that the second upgraded thoughts have the highest likelihood of being true, not the thoughts that just default came into my mind from my little monkey brain, right? And I think that's the case for most of us in most situations. It's just that if we're so caught up in it happening, it's really hard to see. Now, going with changing our thoughts and upgrading our thoughts, I think the third thing that I told myself is I need to ask better fucking questions.

Right? Most people, including me in the last few weeks, ask terrible questions when they're struggling. Right? Questions like, why is this happening to me? What's wrong with me? And these questions reinforce our suffering and they keep us stuck in the sphere of suffering. Instead, we want to ask, what can I learn from this? How can I let this make me stronger? What's good about this situation?

Because I really believe, and I can say this because in all other areas of my life, I actually feel like I'm very well trained on having productive questions and thoughts, especially when it comes to business and personal relationships, actually. I really think that the quality of our life is tied to the quality of the thoughts. And not even the thoughts, but the questions that we ask ourselves.

Now, I will say this. I also believe that there are going to be times where you try to change your thoughts and it's not that they go away, okay? So when I'm talking about upgrading thoughts, it's not like the other ones disappear. I wish they would disappear, but that's not what happens. What happens is that

You focus on believing the new thoughts more than the old ones and the old ones just get quieter. They just don't feel as loud, but they're still there. They don't go away, guys. Like the feelings of doubt, the feelings like you're going to fail, the feelings like what if this is forever, the feelings like what if I'm a failure? What if I let this person down? What if I'm a terrible wife? What if I'm a terrible husband? What if I'm a terrible leader? What if I'm a bad friend? Like it's not like I don't have those thoughts. It's just that they get quieter over time and then the other thoughts get louder.

And so what's what helps me when I'm going through a time like this is just being able to reframe and ask myself better questions, because that's what I realized is, again, like I'm just asking myself the shittiest questions and you ask shitty questions, you get shitty answers. Why is this happening to me? I don't know. Maybe you deserve it. What's wrong with me? So many things. What if this continues forever? Oh, my God, you're going to feel awful for the rest of your life.

Like, what the fuck are we supposed to say to those questions that we ask ourselves? Like, they're terrible questions. You're gonna get terrible answers. And so here's the thing. I wanted to make this podcast because I wanted you guys to hear how I work through this. And I also wanted you to understand the same thing I've been telling myself all day, which is at the end of the day, suffering is a choice.

And the only way out of it is to take responsibility for how we think and how we feel because nobody else is going to do it for us. Not your team, not your husband, not your wife, not your friend, not your parents. It's just on us. And the thing is, pain is inevitable, but how long we stay in it, that's on us. And how much we indulge in it, that's on us. And again, like I say this as much for myself as I do for everybody here.

And I think that what this really exposed this time in my life to me is that I'm so good at turning my pain into, I would say, useful, productive action in so many areas of my life. But I realized that I have, I had a blind spot. I had an area that I wasn't necessarily the best with, and I'm working through that now. And

I'm grateful that it's happening now and not later. And it's something that I now know I personally can work on. Those are the thoughts that I'm going to focus on. The thing is, we can't avoid pain, but we can stop suffering. And I think that the second that we stop resisting the pain and we take ownership over our thoughts and we start forcing ourselves to ask ourselves better questions, even if it means you just write them down and read them.

right? Then we start freeing ourselves from that emotional suffering. I hope this helped you guys. I hope that this wasn't a completely depressing podcast. And if it resonated with you, I hope it helped you if you're suffering, if you're in pain. And if it's not you, if you know somebody who is, like, please share this with them if you think they need to hear it. I think too many people...

online don't share when they're going through a hard time. And I just hope that this helps somebody in remembering that pain is temporary. Pain does pass. Suffering is optional.