“Don’t hope for a life with no pain; hope for a life with good pain. We all know that not everything that feels good is actually good. In the same way, not everything that feels painful is necessarily bad.” ~ LaRae Quy, Smart Brief
“Too many people believe that everything must be pleasurable in life, which makes them constantly search for distractions and short-circuits the learning process. The pain is a kind of challenge your mind presents—will you learn how to focus and move past the boredom, or like a child will you succumb to the need for immediate pleasure and distraction?” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery
“Our most radical changes in perspective often happen at the tail end of our worst moments. It’s only when we feel intense pain that we’re willing to look at our values and question why they seem to be failing us. We need some sort of existential crisis to take an objective look at how we’ve been deriving meaning in our life, and then consider changing course.” ~ Mark Mason, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” ~ Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
“I know the world is crazy. I know love is not always the way it’s meant to be. I know sometimes, things hurt. But I also know that we’ll get through this. That our hearts will arrive on the other side, in one piece. That everything is beautiful, if we give it the chance to be.” ~ Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
“If one comes across a person who has been shot by an arrow, one does not spend time wondering about where the arrow came from, or the caste of the individual who shot it, or analyzing what type of wood the shaft is made of, or the manner in which the arrowhead was fashioned. Rather, one should focus on immediately pulling out the arrow.” ~ Shakyamuni, the Buddha, via The Art of Happiness
“There is one aspect to our experience of suffering that is of vital importance. When you are aware of your pain and suffering, it helps you to develop your capacity for empathy, the capacity that allows you to relate to other people’s feelings and suffering. This enhances your capacity for compassion towards others. So as an aid in helping us connect with others, it can be seen as having value.” ~ Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness
“The strong sensations we generally label as pain are inherent to living, but we can work with the quality of our experience in relation to these sensations. If we resist them, our resistance actually intensifies the sensations and thus creates additional pain. Another common way we intensify pain is by taking it personally and having a ‘why me?’ attitude. If we can relax into pain as a natural part of living that everyone experiences, and let go of the self-judgment that something is wrong with me because I’m experiencing pain, we can alleviate our suffering to a large degree. Much of our suffering is caused by attachment to our sense of a separate autonomous ‘I’ that can somehow achieve a permanent state of affairs with only pleasure and no pain.” ~ Robert Kull, Solitude
“There are no mistakes in life, only lessons. There is no such thing as a negative experience, only opportunities to grow, learn and advance along the road of self-mastery. From struggle comes strength. Even pain can be a wonderful teacher.” ~ Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
“Closing down in the midst of pain is a denial of a man’s true nature. A superior man is free in feeling and action, even amidst great pain and hurt. If necessary, a man should live with a hurting heart rather than a closed one. He should learn to stay in the wound of pain and act with spontaneous skill and love even from that place.” ~ David Deida, The Way of the Superior Man
