Power Tool: Loving Life vs. Fighting Life

A Coaching Power Tool created by Bolor Choijamts Lorinet
(Life Coach, SINGAPORE)

I realized that it’s insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100% of the time. Byron Katie

We all experience ups and downs throughout our lives – sometimes they can lead us to personal growth, other times to the creation of fears. It all comes down to how we view change – either we embrace it and move forward or we get frightened and paralyzed. However, regardless of how we view change, change is inevitable – in fact, it is the nature of life.

When we live our lives trying to figure out who should we be, how everyone should behave and the events should enfold for us to be OK, It is similar to swimming against the tide–painful and pointless exercise. So why do we fight change? Michael A.Singer in his book “Untethered soul” writes:

If you have a lot of fear, you won’t like change. You’ll try to create a world around you that is predictable, controllable and definable. You try to create a world that doesn’t stimulate your fears.

However, the reality is life happens – we can fall sick, someone can slam into our car, our kids can fail at school and the husband can run away with another woman etc. When the difficulties arise, we can react by looking outwards and try to change or fix these external circumstances or by looking inside and altering our inner attitudes and responses to make peace with those circumstances. When we follow the first path, we can experience regret, blame, shame, guilt – we hear in our mind

I should/could have, he shouldn’t have, it should/could be, why i/he/she/it isn’t the way I want them to be..

Where it takes us? We can react by reliving the past and getting anxious about the future. We can reach a point when we are totally lost. The other choice is to look inside and to acknowledge what we experience and choose to let go of the drama and move on. Then we can truly embrace and enjoy life without conditions, with all its ups and downs.

Byron Katie explains it in “Loving what it is”:

The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want. If you want reality to be different than what it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark.

Self-Application

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;  The courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference. Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

It has taken me a long time to realize that I suffer when I want people or circumstances to be different than they are. I remember myself when I was 23 and arrived in UK for the first time from Mongolia to do my Masters degree. I have spent the whole year in my dormitory studying day and night. I hardly went out with my classmates because I have put myself under enormous pressure – to catch up with my classmates from UK because I resented myself that I didn’t know as much as them. Of course, one would argue that it is that drive that helped me to get my degree. However, I know today that I can still achieve what I want to achieve without beating myself up over the past and while living and loving life.

We can spend a lot of our lives blaming, judging, resenting, comparing and feeling powerless because people haven’t behaved like we wanted them to or expected them to, beating ourselves up and regretting over the things that already have happened and blaming the circumstances for our challenges. When we live like that we hardly live in the present, as we are busy reliving the past and worrying about the future.

When we realize that we are the ones who are creating our own suffering, we can decide to let go of pain and enjoy life. When we accept life with all its ups and downs, with good and bad and look at all the events as stepping stones for our learning and growth, we can handle the flow of life with more ease and serenity. When we learn how to appreciate and be grateful for all we have today and this moment, we can relax and enjoy. It takes awareness and commitment to stay on this spiritual path as it is natural for us to experience disturbing thoughts, emotions and events in life. Practicing mindfulness, self-care and self-love and love, compassion and kindness to all that surrounds us are important for living in the present and for living it fully.

Rumi describes it so well in his poem The Guesthouse: