Turning an ouch into “Yes, Thank You”


Life presents plenty of ouches. But in truth, how often do we find ourselves suffering?

Sometimes ouches happen when we don’t get our way, or life doesn’t treat us the way we want to be treated, or we want something to be other than it is.
 
Suffering from an ouch is optional. Shakespeare was onto the secret of our freedom from suffering: “Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

How we think is the secret. For example, you misplace your keys and the self-induced suffering begins: “How could I be so negligent! Why does this always happen to me when I’m in a hurry? Darn it! Where are those stupid keys?”

One self-recrimination follows another. You might as well cut a switch off a tree and beat yourself as to engage in this stream of self-abusive thinking. Ouch!

To interrupt this suffering, we can become finders. Finding the source of our suffering by asking, “What was I thinking that sent me into this tailspin?”

Each of us interprets our own experience. But what happened is less important than how we respond. Take the lost keys. What was your first response? Your first thought was to blame yourself: “How could I be so negligent?” But affixing blame does nothing to produce the missing keys.

Nipping these negative thoughts in the bud is the key to changing our experience from an ouch to something more positive. For example, you realize you have misplaced the keys. Step #1: Remain calm. Step #2: Invoke the spirit of play. Instead of raking yourself over the coals, grin and turn the situation into a treasure hunt: I wonder where I hid those keys? Are they in the drawer? Are they on my dresser? In my pocket?

I can’t tell you how many unexpected surprises I’ve turned up while scouting for misplaced objects.

By taking a moment to invoke the spirit of play or adventure, we can turn any situation into a “yes, thank you.” “Yes” because we are willing to creatively respond to the situation. And “thank you” because we are freeing ourselves from the suffering and also learning to have more patience.

 “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be,” said Abraham Lincoln. If we focus on the ouch, we remain in pain. If we focus on what’s to be learned or gained, we acquire the ability to say, “Yes, thank you” to whatever life offers.

It’s easy to become attached to getting what we want, when we want it. Yet clinging or searching or longing for anything means we are focused on what we don’t have or what we’re afraid of losing – situations that by their very nature create suffering. Attaching ourselves to any idea or outcome limits our ability to be open to all kinds of possibilities.

One of my favorite stories is about a farmer who tilled his fields with the aid of a horse. One day the horse ran away. His neighbor came by and said, “It's a very bad thing that your horse ran away. You must have bad luck.”

The farmer said, “Maybe.”

 The next day the horse came back with half a dozen other wild horses. The neighbor came again and said, “What tremendous luck.”

The farmer said, “Maybe.”

On the third day the farmer’s son fell and broke his leg while trying to ride one of the wild horses. Again, the neighbor came and observed his bad luck. Again the farmer said, “Maybe.”

The next day the government came to recruit strong healthy farmers into the army. When they found this farmer's son with a broken leg they left him alone. So, again, the neighbor came by and observed that it wasn't such bad luck after all since everything had turned out well. The farmer said again, “Maybe.’’

By refusing to label these situations either good or bad, the farmer avoided suffering.

The next time you encounter an ouch in your life, ask yourself if you’re willing to see it differently, to turn the ouch into a ‘Yes, thank you” -- or, at least a “Maybe.”


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Published 5_28_08 in Sequim Gazette monthly column.
Visit Ruth at www.DrRuthMarcus.com.