But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for. ~~ Paulo Coelho

It is the gap between the ‘What is it that I have today’ (our current reality) and the ‘What is it that I want it to be today’ (the reality we wish it were instead) that causes suffering.

Often changing the way we look at our crisis/suffering makes it easier for us to emerge victorious from it.

Is it really a crisis or am we just reading it as one, due to our earlier experiences and the mindset these experiences bring along?

Is this really mine? More often than not, we tend to be influenced into taking responsibility for someone else’s crisis or simply because we love doing it!! We need to learn to offer compassion and support and let the other person triumph.

Could I want this in my life? Sometimes, accepting what we didn’t want at first could open a whole new world of possibilities.

And if nothing works,

Can I accept this for what it is? Coming to terms with our current reality is the easiest way to end our suffering. This also lets us move ahead.

Although our attitude may not take away the physical pain caused to us by others, it can affect our mental and emotional pain. We can choose not to let it bother us or we can obsess over it until we are an emotional wreck.

Many times our pain comes from worrying needlessly about what might happen and then it never happens. We can’t do anything about the past and we don't know what tomorrow holds. We can only be in control of what is.