Have you ever pitched a fit in your life after loss? Have you ever just thrown yourself down on the proverbial floor and said, “NO MORE!”? I get it. There’s a lot in our new life that is so unfair, unjust, and unwanted. The pain of loss is inevitable, but the suffering is optional.

Maybe it’s time to wave the white flag on suffering.

The pain of loss is clean pain. The thoughts we wrap around that pain creates suffering, including denial, regret, worry, anxiety, indignation, anger, and self-pity.

It is in the resisting, fighting and denying of pain that we create suffering.

In Buddhism, pain is referred to as being shot by the first arrow. Suffering is being shot by the second arrow.

You let go of the suffering when you learn to accept and process the pain.

Allow that pain to be present in your life when it happens, and to acknowledge it and sit with it so that you can move though it. You learn to say, “this really hurts.”

Take some time each day to just sit with your pain. Close your eyes and breathe it in. Acknowledge it and don’t resist it. Ask yourself:

1. What does it look like?
2. What does it feel like?
3. Where do I feel it in my body?
4. Does it have a vibration of fast or slow?
5. Does it have a color or shape?

Take 90 seconds to just sit with that pain and allow it to exist. You will notice as you become an observer of your pain that it will shift and perhaps release. It will loosen it’s hold on you. You may actually feel it move through you and out of you.

That, my friend, is how you process pain, and reduce your suffering.

Do you know what awaits you once you say no more to suffering? A human experience that feels ALL of the emotions, and shows up in a space that is clean and free of suffering.

When pain comes, you acknowledge it and FEEL it. When suffering attempts to hijack your life, you just send it on its’ way.

Blessings friends,

Julie