Bearing the Bearable – Dr. Walter J. Matweychuk
“…very few things you don’t like will actually kill you. In fact, you rarely say, ‘I can’t stand it!’ when you are referring to physical danger – but mainly to non-dangerous events like rejection. So you can stand practically everything that you don’t at all like.” – Albert Ellis, Ph.D.
Leave it to Ellis to make a helpful point crystal clear. As humans we have a knack for upsetting ourselves by thinking in self-defeating ways that are not consistent with the facts of the situation. As you go about your day monitor your behavior and your emotions. When you meet up with something that blocks or undermines your path to a goal look to see if you are telling yourself that you cannot stand the adversity and how this attitude is false to the facts. See if you are confusing an inconvenient obstruction with something that is truly “unbearable.” If you are upset and inwardly moaning and groaning about the adversity chances are you are doing just that, defining something that is quite bearable as unbearable. Unfortunately, humans easily think in this self-defeating way and especially with matters that are important to us. Because crooked thinking of this sort comes quite naturally to us I sometimes think of it as a design flaw of the human mind. Call yourself out on this self-defeating tendency and mumble to yourself “I very much do not like this adversity and feel uncomfortable having to figure out how to overcome it, but the adversity and the discomfort it causes is NOT unbearable. It is only very inconvenient! Now compose yourself and think about what you can do to overcome it. If there is nothing you can do to change it, then gracefully bear it by accepting its existence and moving on. I won’t let it derail my emotional well-being.”
Bottom line: You can bear that which you do not like. Remember that!