The effort we put into avoiding difficult conversations.

The energy we invest into keeping that bad feeling at bay.

The thoughts we dedicate to finding ways to reduce uncertainty.

That’s what makes everything more difficult, bad, and uncertain.

When you accept that as a part of being a colleague, a leader, a partner, a friend, a parent, a human being, then the rest of the journey is downhill.

I’m not suggesting that we should cease efforts to alleviate pain, our own or that of others. But as psychotherapist Sheldon Kopp was keenly aware, our “mistaken belief that it can be cured” is what makes pain unbearable.

Ed Batista, Pain Is Mandatory. Suffering Is Optional.