But it’s not meant as a condemnation. It’s not blame calling. Hopefully it’s a wake up call. And it should also be a sign of hope.

It means that you can change how you experience your life. Your job is two fold (to be simplistic). Decide how you want to feel. Then do everything you can to feel that way.

Huh?

You can choose to be unhappy about what’s happening right now and feel miserable or you can decide to make it “work for you”. That’s hard to do when you’re in Chronic pain but you can decide exactly how miserable you’re going to be.

Remember the post on the two arrows. One arrow is the actual pain. The second arrow is your response which is the suffering due to that response.

Put this together with the pause (between reaction and response) and you can decide to minimize the suffering.

I love to eat (long story). But I had a procedure last week that has made eating (and drinking) quite painful. There have been times when I’ve “felt” quite miserable. But then I have to do something…say it’s an interview for my podcast. And my mind goes into that and forgets to be miserable. Imagine that. Sure I’m not eating or drinking then but I also feel happier because I’m concentrating on something else. Or if I pick up my laptop and start writing, I’m less miserable because I’m not paying attention to the problem. It’s not something I planned but I’m glad I discovered it. My decision, my choice is to not spend so much time in that problem. It helps. It doesn’t fix the issue. But it helps me to not spiral downward as I used to do.

You can choose your response. You can’t control the circumstances but you can be and are in charge of what you do in those circumstances.