Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
The Durable Dad podcast gives men the skills and tools they need to be rock solid for their family, their work and their community.
Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
081: Is Your Life Harder than it Needs to be?
Are you making things more difficult for yourself?
Whether life feels pretty normal, or if you’re going through a rough patch, here’s an equation that’ll make things easier for you:
Suffering = Pain x Resistance
In other words, the more you resist the hard, the more you suffer.
Conversely, the more you embrace the “suck,” the easier things will flow for you.
Listen to today’s episode to learn exactly how to open up to the pain and stop making life harder than it needs to be.
This is the Durable Dad Podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is going to give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. All right, what's up? Episode number 81.
Speaker 1:I have spent way too much time trying to find a place to go backpacking in Wisconsin. Brenda and I are going on a three-night backpacking trip this coming weekend and we're dropping our kids off at my parents' house in Chicago and then going into Wisconsin, and usually I love searching for hikes, but looking in Wisconsin was really tough. It was like overloaded with too many options and I am about 60% confident in myself of choosing a good trail. But either way, we're going to find a spot. Three nights in the woods Hopefully don't see that many people. And yeah, brendan, I haven't gotten this kind of time together in a while. So I I I don't recommend going this long without a trip with your wife, but that's just how it's landed for us. So it's going to be good to just be together and hopefully come back feeling refreshed, feeling energized and all that good stuff, and I'll be back with more podcasts after the camping trip. All right, so to today's topic to what we're going to be working with on the podcast today. What I'm going to be talking about. Topic to what we're going to be working with on the podcast today. What I'm going to be talking about.
Speaker 1:There is this guy that I'm working with and he's going through a divorce, pretty tough divorce, and he's just. He's got a lot of anger, resentment, a lot of different emotions when you go through a big life change like this, and we talked about this equation I was listening to a podcast with an interview with Andrew Holick and he has this equation of suffering equals pain, times, resistance, and we all suffer in some way. It's a discontentment and you'll notice your suffering. If you're pissed off a lot, if you're upset, if you're disgruntled. Sometimes Think about where you aren't content, where are you not satisfied in life. That is a sign of suffering. Where do you say this sucks? Or if you're thinking that life would be better when things change right If I have more money, then life will be better or waiting till you retire or get a different job, or when the kids have outgrown a certain stage in their life. We all suffer, we all have suffering experiences and this equation is going to help you out, no matter where you're suffering in life. It could be something huge like going through a divorce, or it could be your kid not having a date for homecoming or a grueling project at work.
Speaker 1:Suffering equals pain, times, resistance, and the suffering starts with pain. We're not going to talk about physical pain, even though this equation works with physical pain. We're going to talk about emotional pain because a lot of guys are pretty decent about accepting physical pain and managing their physical pain. But emotional pain, like disappointment, fear, sadness, those uncomfortable emotions most guys aren't great about accepting the emotional pain. All of our suffering, all of our discontentment in life equals how much we resist emotional pain. So a lot of the times when we think about accepting emotional pain we think it's weak, because then we have to let our guard down or we're open to it. But we've never tried. We've never tried to accept emotional pain, so we resist it automatically and guys will say like, oh no, I never really feel sad or I can't feel weak, I can't let my guard down. Those are pushing away, resisting the painful emotions and when that resistance is high, our suffering is going to go up. Hero with a thousand faces he kind of breaks down the hero's journey in a very exciting way. I'm not going to go into it. Anyway.
Speaker 1:Joseph Campbell has this quote all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It's a very interesting shift of perspective and that's all it is Joyful participation in the sorrows, and everything changes when you are falling into the unknown. This isn't his quote anymore, but when you're falling into the unknown, instead of resisting that fall, you voluntarily fall Joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes. So I think about a lot of the unknowns in our lives. In my life, like running your own business, there is a lot of unknowns and a lot of fear there Running a family with kids and the way the environment is and school and all the different variables. There's a lot of unknown and sometimes it can feel like we're falling, like we're out of control, and the more we resist it, the more suffering we're going to create.
Speaker 1:So while we were getting ready for recording this, brenda was like all right, tell me how this has come up for you. When have you accepted the fall? And I think I accepted the fall when we went through the adoption process. Like you, don't know how long the process is going to take. There's a shit ton of paperwork you have to do. You don't know how healthy your kid's going to be. You don't know how healthy your kid's going to be. You don't know about the birth mom or the birth dad what that's going to be like and I really just let go of trying to control anything. It felt like a lot of ease. It was like all right, what's the next step? Let's do it, let's do the next step. And there was an ease to it.
Speaker 1:And on the flip side, a time in life when I was more resistant to the and excited and I had acknowledged some of the sadness and disappointment about leaving. But looking back now, I was a lot more bummed than I realized. Deciding to leave the mountains and live in the Midwest again was, I know, and I know this because I've gotten coached on it and I've gotten to know this pain a little bit more and come to terms with it. But I know that that first few months I was really resisting it and causing a lot more suffering in life. Causing was just my energy, kind of just feeling down and depressed, like trying externally trying to love everything but not acknowledging and accepting this pain, and the pain was like a sorrow of leaving and some of that like grief. And when that suffering is there, it's a weight and it shows up in our relationships, it shows up in our productivity and we can't totally eliminate it. The goal isn't to get rid of pain or get rid of suffering. It's part of life.
Speaker 1:In Buddhism, the four noble truths of the Buddha the first one is life is dukkha, and dukkha translates to suffering or discontentment. And that's the truth that there is discontentment, and it just means that there is something we don't currently have that we want, and there is an energy there that is discontent. So, using this equation, we can lessen our suffering. Suffering equals pain, times, resistance. If you have thoughts like all right, this is hard, let's go, I can do this, or this isn't what I wanted, but this is the cards I've been dealt, let's do this. That is acceptance, that is ownership of your pain and continuing to move forward even though the pain's there. The other end is fuck this, I shouldn't be the one that has to do this. I gotta get out of this.
Speaker 1:Those victim thoughts, those are the signs that you're resisting the hard, resisting the pain, and that's the stuff that'll increase your suffering. Those are the mindsets that'll increase your suffering. So if you think about your life, what is hard right now, and ask yourself are you resisting that pain and what would it look like if you opened up to it? The more that we resist pain, the more we make life harder than it needs to be. So use this equation suffering equals pain times, resistance to start easing the suffering, to make the day-to-day in life more enjoyable, because life is awesome and life is hard, and when we open up to all of it, that's when we really get to enjoy and we can really cruise through life more smoothly and our relationships are better. We're a bigger impact in a positive way on people, because we're not multiplying our pain by resisting the hard stuff that happens in life. All right, that's what I got for you guys this week. Have a good one and I'll catch you next time.
