How To Stop Suffering: The Key To Relieve Stress & Anxiety

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. Today I'm going to be talking about how to stop suffering. Now, as a human, we all suffer. It is just part of being a human. There is nothing that you can do to get away from it. And we're going to dive into it today. In fact, in Buddhism, suffering is a basic human fact. Now, that sounds really depressing, I get it. But really, it comes down to removing ourselves from suffering. I think as we are raised, we are told who we're supposed to be, who are not supposed to be, and we have to change ourselves in order to fit in with society. We are, as I like to say, domesticated. We are domesticated as children to fit in with society. And so we learn to not like parts of ourselves, to not like parts of society. We find people are good, people are bad, who are supposed to be close with who we're not supposed to be close with. And it sounds really depressing to say that. So suffering is just a part of life. But I'm not talking about pain. Pain is a part of life as well. I'm talking about suffering, which is created in the human mind. And we're gonna talk about how to remove that. And really what it comes down to. If you look at humans, I like to look at everything and try to make it as simple as possible to break it down for someone. As humans, we are animals, but we're animals with a incredible piece of machinery between our ears. The problem, though, is, is that most people are not raised understanding how to use this piece machinery. Like, we're not given a manual on our brains, on our mindset, on our psychology, and how to actually use it for our benefit. And so in turn, if we don't know how to use it correctly and we don't know what it does, what it doesn't do, it's gonna be really hard to wrangle it down. But the difference between animals and humans, though, is that animals do not suffer like humans. And when I say suffer, I don't mean like they're being killed by another animal and they're not suffering in that moment. That would be pain in that moment. But what I mean is the suffering that goes on in our minds. Like, I can sit next to my dog on my couch, looking out the window, and my dog can be peaceful all day long. He can just be there. He can be present, he's calm. I can see his deep breaths, which means he's relaxed, and he just does not suffer. But I can sit right next to him and I could be freaking the fuck out in my own mind, right? I could be stressing. I could be anxious simply because of what's going on in my mind and nothing else. Not because of the outside world, but because of my inside world. You ever been there before where you do that, where it's just like you're sitting there and there's no reason to really be suffering, but we're putting ourself through it. And so when I say pain versus suffering, pain is just part of life. Like, there's pain. There will be things. There will be people who die, people who leave you. There will be physical pain. All of this stuff is pain. Suffering is the prolonging of that pain past the moment of it actually happening. When someone breaks up with you, that's painful. They did break up with you. Suffering is resisting it for the next six months. And so we're gonna dive into this and really go really deep. But I do want you to understand this. You know, maybe if you were a Buddhist monk and you are sitting in some monastery and you are completely away from people, you could get to a point where there is no suffering in your life, where your mind is just completely at ease. I would even venture to say that most monks, if we were to pull them out of the monasteries and throw them in the middle of a big city like New York City, there would be some suffering in their own minds eventually, right? But there is. The way I like to think of this is that there is no destination. Maybe I get to the end of my life and I completely relieve all of my suffering. Maybe I get to that, but I don't really expect that I will. I just expect that it is kind of part of life. The same way that I have to breathe in oxygen, same way that we have to have the sun in order for plants to grow to stay alive, I have to drink water. There's just aspects of life that are facts and suffering just might be a fact, and that's okay. So if I get to the end of my life and I have not relieved all my suffering, it's all right. There is no destination. But hopefully I'll just have less suffering in my life as I continue to work on myself. So that's really what I'm talking about when I'm talking about this. And if you fully understand the suffering and what I'm gonna talk about today and you embody it, it will 100% make you happier. I can promise you that. And so I'm gonna Break it down into what I call the three Ls. Okay, let's dive into it. There's three different Ls that cause suffering in our lives. The first one is longing. Longing for something in the way that I see it. So when I think of longing, it's longing for something by not having what it is that you want. And so desire is a part of it. Desire is actually a part of all of these. Just so you know, desire is kind of like the underlying piece of it. And so it's wanting something thinking that that thing will complete me or that will make me feel more complete or will make me feel more whole. It's the feeling of I will be happier when I have X. I will be happier when I get that raise. I will be happier when I get that watch. I will be happier when we move into this house. I will be happier when I finally get a girlfriend or whatever it is. And more than anything else, this is what advertisements are based off of. Advertisements exploit the human condition to get us to buy. To first off to want their product and to buy it to make us feel like we're not enough until we get it. There's a whole lot of psychology actually goes behind this. There's an incredible documentary, it's really long. It's called the Century of the Self. It's about Edward Bernays, who is actually a guy who was. His uncle was Sigmund Freud and he learned human psychology. And up until that point, people only bought stuff because they needed it. He started turning all advertisements into making people want something. And so the craziest part about advertisements is advertising companies have incredible psychologists that work for them that make you feel like you're not enough until you buy this thing. And so we have to understand that buying something or having something is not going to make us happy. Happiness is an inside job, you know, I know somebody who is worth over $4 billion and is incredibly unhappy. He buys. He has more shit than any person I've ever seen. And I'm talking about like, not just things, like I'm talking about planes and exotic animals on ranches and you know, there's. And he just. He's incredibly unhappy. And he thinks that buying and buying and buying is make him feel better, but it doesn't make him feel better at all. He's still miserable. But I've also been to third world countries and met people who live in shacks that are built by scrap metal and held together by dirt that they got wet and it dried and helped mold their houses. And hold their houses together. Some of the poorest people I've ever met and they are some of the happiest people I've ever met as well. So owning something or receiving something or getting something never actually makes you happy. Happy is an inside job. Buying something and owning something will never make you happy. In fact, there are many studies that show that once basic human needs are met, food, water, shelter, all of that stuff, happiness does not. Your happiness is not raised based off of how much money you make. There was a 2010 paper that was published, it was called, it was in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and they found that emotional well being, AKA day to day happiness rises with income but. But it plateaus at about $75,000 a year. And after that, happiness has nothing to do with money, buying things, receiving things, any of that. But what it shows us though is that happiness is not dependent on things. Happiness is not external, it is internal. And trust me, I've gone through this entire journey. I can tell you that my level of happiness when I was making $75,000 a year at 23 years old was exactly the same as it was at 27 years old making $250,000. And I realized that things could not make me happy. Now I'm still stuck in this wanting and all of the three L's as well. I'm trying to slowly remove myself, I'm not perfect from it, but I had the realization that these are just digits in a bank account. They're just digits on a screen is what they are. So if you feel like buying something or owning something will make you happy, then you're going to be playing a losing game. But then you start thinking about besides the longing for material items, what about non material items? Lots of people feel like when they're single that the answer to their problems is finding someone to be in a relationship with. And they think, oh well, I'm not very happy because I'm not in a relationship. I have to find my soulmate and then I'll be happy. When I find someone who loves me, then I'll be happy. Hey, if you're loving this episode on how to stop suffering, please do me a favor. Give us a like down below for the YouTube algorithm. And if you have any topics you want me to cover in the future, go ahead and type them down in the comments. But your level of happiness might jump for a little while in the new relationship phase, but it will plateau and you'll find yourself back in the longing of feeling like you Are needing something outside of you to make you happy. So why does this happen? Well, when we put all of our hope into getting something, we forget to enjoy what's right in front of us, which is the present moment. We think that there is another moment outside of this moment where we will be happier if we receive something or if we have that soulmate. And what we do is we just forget that we could just be happy right now. Happiness is actually a decision, and it's an internal thing. It's like if we were to look at a beautiful sunset, and you're sitting there, it's incredibly beautiful sunset, but you're sad because you wish it were the sunrise. But your happiness doesn't come from the sunset or sunrise. It comes from enjoying both of them. It. It comes from just learning to enjoy the moment. So that's. The first one is longing. The second one seems very similar. But I'm gonna tell you the differences, which is lack. Lack is the feeling of I don't have this thing, and if I get this thing, it'll make me happy. Now, it sounds the same, but more so. This thing will make me whole. And longing is. Instead of external things, it's more of like turning a mirror on yourself. Like, if I was smarter, then I would feel happy. Then I would be whole. If I was smarter, then I would finally be good enough. If I was taller, well, then I would finally be whole. I'd finally be happy. If I was taller, then I would be skinnier. I wouldn't have so much fat on my ass, and then I would look better, Right? So it's like looking at ourselves in the mirror. And that could be physically, but it could also be internally. Oh, if I didn't have add, then I would be whole, and I wouldn't feel like I'm not a full person. I would be happier if I didn't have this thing or whatever it might be. If I wasn't born into such a crazy family, then I'd finally be whole. But I was born into this crazy family, and they are this way, and they make me sad. So therefore, I'll never be happy. You know? Oh, if I wasn't aging, if I didn't have these lines on my face. Like, people suffer when they get old and they're trying to resist, and they do surgeries, and they do these shots in their faces, and they do all of the things they can do to possibly change themselves, thinking that those things are gonna make them happy. But it literally changes nothing. Nothing about themselves. And so what happens we think, okay, the first one is longing for something which is outside of us. The second one which is lacking something, which is, I lack this thing internally inside of myself. And therefore I am not whole, I am not complete. But if I were to be able to get this thing, if I were to be able to be taller, if I were to be able to be smarter, if I were to be able to be better looking, if I were to be able to get rid of these wrinkles on my face, then, then and only then could I finally be happy. And this can be tricky because sometimes we don't even know what we think we're missing. And so we feel like something isn't right with us. Oh man, something's not right with me. There's something wrong. And because of something not being wrong, I feel incomplete, I feel not good enough. And so we sit there and we're like, I don't know why I don't feel whole, I don't know why I don't feel this way. And so it does require more work on your side, does require more self discovery to uncover what it is. And one of the things that doesn't help with it, I'm going to be honest with you, is social media because you can see the lives of people who, they look perfect because they have editing and they have Photoshop and their lives look perfect because they're only posting them at their happiest moments or in Mykonos sitting on a beach and you're like, what the hell? I'm sitting in the middle of BFE Georgia and I don't, I'm not sitting on Mykonos with a, with a drink in my hand. The hell's wrong with my life? And so you're comparing yourself to mostly fake lives and fake looking people because people edit themselves. And then you're thinking, there's something wrong with me. And so because of the fact there's something wrong with me, I'll never be complete. And so therefore I suffer. So we compare ourselves to impossible standards that do not reflect reality. Whether that be somebody on social media, whether that be something in an advertisement that you see and you see somebody's body and you're like, man, I'd be happier if I looked like her. Oh man, I'd be happier if I had a six pack like him. Oh, I'd be happier if I could, you know, sit down and focus and not feel so anxious all the time. And so many people look so perfect and they look like they have perfect lives, but they're absolutely Miserable. And so the thing I want you to understand is that, sure, we can want to change ourself. There's nothing wrong with that. The majority of this podcast episodes I put up about how to change yourself to become a more evolved, expansive version of yourself. Wanting to change yourself and evolve. I don't like to use the word better because better implies worse, which means that you're worse now, but more evolved version of yourself, a wiser version of yourself, a more expansive version of yourself. All of that is completely fine. But what if we can make ourselves feel better in this moment as we are working on ourselves and that's really what it comes down to. And the second one with lacking. And then the third one, the third L is loss. Loss is a part of life. We lose toys, we lose friends, we lose loved ones. Sometimes we even lose parts of ourselves along the way. Everyone knows that losing something or someone that you love, or a dog or an animal that you have, or a best friend, whether that be to death or whether that be to, you know, they just decide to leave. Your life is one of the hardest things in life. But it is once again a part of life. So we gotta stop resisting the way that life actually is. It hurts. There's no way around that. But we get stuck by wanting what we used to have. Maybe we get it back and maybe we don't. I don't know. Maybe that person who broke up with you will want to get back into a relationship with you. Maybe they do get back into a relationship with you in two years. But regardless of whether that happens or not, we are in charge of how we feel, regardless of our circumstances. If we lose a loved one, all we want is them back. I'd be happier if they didn't die. They died so young. They were only 27 years old. Why? That doesn't make any sense. Why would God take somebody who's so amazing? And we fight and we fight and we not even fight. We resist and we resist and we resist. What we're constantly doing with all three of these Ls, we're resisting the way that the world actually is. We're thinking that we are smart enough that the world should be different than it actually is. Oh, whatever created this perfect universe that I'm in clearly doesn't know what the hell they're doing, because it should be this way. And so the only constant in life is change. All things are changing at all times. All things around you will one day be gone. Every single person that you know will one day be gone. The clothes that you're wearing will one day be gone. The animals that you have in your house, around your house, the birds, the squirrels will all be gone. The trees that surround your house will all be gone. The buildings, your house, your cars, everything, what you're sitting in right now, everything will be gone one day. That's just the way it's going to be. The more that we resist that actual fact of life, the more that we're actually suffering. And so it could also be like, I was talking about a relationship, right? We had this relationship, we've lost the relationship, and we're suffering because we want to be back together with them. If you've ever had, like a really bad breakup, like a really bad heartbreak, it's terrible, right? It sucks. It's literally one of the worst feelings in the world. And all you want is them back. And you think that getting them back will make you feel better. And you believe that the only thing that will make you happy, make you whole, is that person. But a lot of times the suffering just comes from not accepting. Not even a lot of times. Basically all of the suffering of this comes from not accepting the current state of that relationship. Maybe you do get back together, maybe you don't. But you're still in charge of how you feel, regardless of the circumstances. And that's what's important. And so when we try to grab onto those things and hold them tight, that's what causes the suffering, is we want things to go back to where they were. We want things to stay the same. Why can't we just rewind? Six. Six MONTHS AGO and the only thing we can try to do, try is the key word, is try to remain happy and present as things start to change and creating happiness in your life. And the feeling of just being like. That's. There's not even a word. It's just the feeling of like, just relaxed, peaceful, joyful, just sitting there, you know, not being happy, not being sad, not being pissed off, none of those things. Just that feeling requires us more understanding of what's going on in our life, why we're feeling these things. Then it requires the first step of knowing about these three types of suffering so that we can understand them a little bit more. Because by understanding them, we can work to create a happier life. And it all comes down to one thing and one thing only. Everybody and I mentioned it really quickly, but what it comes down to is acceptance. If you are longing for something, accept that you don't have it. If you're lacking something, accept who you actually are. If you've lost something, accept that this is a reality that it now is. You have to accept it. And the suffering comes from not accepting reality as it is. My one of my first coach that I hired when I was 19 years old used to always say, and I've said it hundreds of times in this podcast, but it needs to be said again and again until it's burned into our minds. Is your stress and anxiety in your life will be in direct proportion to how much you're resisting the way that the world is. Your stress and your anxiety will be in direct proportion to how much you're resisting the way that the world is. If you're resisting that breakup, if you're resisting that you're not the way that you, you know, you don't have the body that you want. If you're resisting that you come from a certain family. If you're resisting that you don't have this car and that car would make you happy. And you're resisting, resisting, resisting that is going to cause suffering. The resisting is not accepting the way that the world is. If we're longing for something, if we're lacking something in ourselves, or if we feel like we've lost something and we want it back, we're simply just not accepting how the world currently is, the current state of our lives. It doesn't mean that we don't work to create a different life. It doesn't mean that we don't try to improve and try to expand and try to evolve ourselves. It means that we just need to simply accept life as it is and continue to work to change our lives. Because if I'm on this path of self discovery and self mastery and trying to become better and trying to become a better, trying to build a business and be a great parent and be a great spouse and all of this stuff, I can still enjoy myself and enjoy my life while I'm on this path. There's no reason why you can't feel happy and fulfilled while trying to create the new version of yourself and the new version of your life. And that's what it comes down to. Life's a journey. There's ups, there's downs. You can't cling to either one of them. Sometimes we want something that we don't have. Sometimes we want to be different. Sometimes we long for something and we want something that we don't have anymore, that we've lost along the way. And sometimes we feel like we're not enough. But if we can understand that the reason why we are not happy and the reason why we're anxious and we're stressed is not because of any external circumstances, because of our internal state. Then we can start to move and we can start to shift. And if we can remember the three L's, the longing, lack, and loss, and we can categorize our desires, we can start to actually just take a step back and accept life as it is. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor. Share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in Obdial Junior R O B D I A L J R Also, if you love this podcast, you'll probably love my book, which you can pre order right now. If you go to robdial.com book it is once again, it's called Level up how to get focused, stop procrastinating and upgrade your life. I put three years of writing this book, 16 rounds of edits, and when you pre order the book, you automatically get a free mini course about how to stop procrastinating, and you also get entered into a prize pool for a drawing of over $25,000 in cash and prizes. So if you go to robdial.combook you can go ahead and pre order it right there. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day. I.