Click Here To Solve ShynessIt’s strange how we always complain that life is so difficult because in reality, life is as difficult as you want it to be.
The 2 core principles of life are survival and reproduction. Everything else is a by-product of those two principles and of our modern world.
We tend to complain about how difficult it is to make money, to make new friends, to find a partner for a relationship or marriage and all sorts of other ‘problems’. We so often complain about how difficult life is that we lose sight of what matters most.
Note: Sentences in Italics are quoted directly from Lori’s book
You forget to have fun, you forget to enjoy breathing and feeling the sun’s rays on your skin. You forget to follow your heart and instead spend your days worrying about the future.
“No matter what religion we follow, what politics we support, what family we are born into, or where we’ve placed our roots, we all deal with universal problems. We want to be happy, we want to be free and we want to live a meaningful life. But how do we do this”?
“The reality is that there are very few concrete, one-size-fits-all answers to the big questions. And accepting that very fact is the foundation to true wisdom. There’s so much we can’t know, understand or predict in life. Yet if we learn to listen to ourselves and then stop to listen long enough to simply be in the world, open and available, the answer can seem so clear”.
Why Is There Suffering In The World?
No matter who you are, it’s certain that at some point in your life you felt emotional hurt. Maybe you’re living a life where you experience more hurt than joy and you may be asking yourself why life has to be this way.
While it’s not possible to avoid emotional hurt, it is possible to avoid suffering by moving through it as quickly as possible. You have the choice to allow your pain to hurt and pass through you instead of keeping it bottled up. You have the choice to accept what you cannot change, and to move on with life as best you can.
Suffering exists because people allow it to exist. Every single person has to deal with problems, obstacles and tragedies. That’s part of life. However, if you choose to let something hurt you for months, years or for the rest of your life, that is not life’s fault. Allow the pain to teach you about life and what you want from it. Don’t block out the pain, don’t deny it. Instead, let it hurt as much as it can and then let it pass through you. It will be intense for a short period of time, but it will pass and it will eventually fade away.
If you want to read more about overcoming suffering, I wrote a detailed article how to deal with hurt, heart-ache and loss.
What Is The Meaning Of Life?
“It’s perhaps the oldest and most frequently asked question in the world: why are we all here”?
I’ve asked myself this question hundreds of times. I try to ‘zoom out’ of life at times, to realize that we are 7 billion tiny ants on a small planet in a gigantic universe. We’re all trying to be successful, to make money, to create things. We fight wars, we destroy our planet, we kill each other. And what for? Just to keep us busy? Or are we some sort of experiment of an alien race?
Who knows? And does it really matter?
What we know is that we’re alive right now. We have a good few decades on this earth if we’re lucky and we have the opportunity to make the most of what we’ve got.
I personally think that the meaning of life is to make the most of the life we have. To enjoy every moment of every day. To help others and make a difference. To experience the countless beauty and adventures that life has to offer and to eventually leave this world in a better way than we found it.
You can create meaning in your life through joy. If you love doing whatever you do, then you feel like you have a purpose. You feel like you’re a part of this world.
But then comes another question: how do you find your purpose? Maybe it’s time to forget about chasing money, fame or status. Maybe it’s time to follow your heart and pursue a path that feels like the right path (even though it may not be financially rewarding initially).
Can People Change, And How?
It seems that some people never change, especially once they’ve disappointed you once and they do it again.
Personally I believe that a person doesn’t change throughout their life. A person is either inherently good or inherently bad.
What does change however, is a person’s beliefs, values and morals. This is a natural part of growth as the person learns more about themselves, about others and about the world around them.
Change starts in the mind. Whatever you choose to believe tends to materialize itself as reality.
Our experiences and social conditioning form bad habits and limiting beliefs over time. This can cause an inherently good person to behave like a bad person while they are actually a good person.
What you need to learn to determine is whether a person is inherently good or inherently bad. If they are inherently good then it’s possible for them to change their bad habits. If a person is inherently bad then there is little hope they will ever change.
Does Everything Happen For A Reason?
Sometimes things happen in life that make you angry, upset or hurt. It’s not always possible to understand why certain things happen, and in these cases you’re prone to asking yourself whether everything happens for a reason.
Do both good and bad things happen to you so that it will lead to some final outcome? Fate, if you will?
Whether there is some sort of universal plan or not, placing faith in the fact that things happen for a reason can help you lighten the load of frustration, worry and regret. You may suffer a loss of someone you care about, experience a broken heart, live with an illness or something less serious. You may feel frustrated because you don’t feel you deserved to have something so bad happen to you. If you allow that frustration to build into anger and hate, it will cause you a lot of suffering. If however you believe that everything happens for a reason, then there is more of life to come your way and it’s easier to let go of what happened to you.
But believing in fate doesn’t mean that you can just kick back on your couch with a cold beer and expect life to happen to you. You need to take action, you need to make choices and you need to make mistakes in order to learn from them and progress through life.
Simple Wisdom For Life’s Hard Questions
This post and the questions herein come from an amazing little book called Simple Wisdom For Life’s Hard Questions which you can get from Amazon.
The book is written by Lori Deschene, author and founder of Tiny Buddha, a site dedicated to finding happiness, balance and success in life.
Simple Wisdom For Life’s Hard Questions contains much more detailed answers to the questions I’ve addressed in this post, including questions such as:
- What does is take to be happy?
- Why are relationships hard?
- Do you need money to be happy?
- How can you make each day count?
If you’re interested in learning the simple answers to life’s hard questions, get yourself a copy of Lori’s book right now:
P.S. Lori is willing to give away FREE copies of her book to the best 2 comments left on this post. So if you want to win, leave a meaningful comment! 
