You Choose Your Suffering

You don't always get to choose what happens to you. 

You don't get to choose when that migraine comes on or how your body feels. You don't get to choose to have a physical disability or the extraordinary circumstances or trauma that happen to you in your lifetime. 

You don't get to choose the way people behave or the conditions of everything and anything external in your life.

But you DO get to choose how you respond to any of those things. 

You do get to dictate your relationship to your experiences. 

We are not in control of the things that happen to us, but we are absolutely in control of how we respond to said things. 

And in this choice, what weighs in the balance, is your suffering. 

You choose your suffering. 

Because suffering is not what happens to us, (thats called life) but  suffering is the way we react, resist, fight, suppress or numb whatever is going on around us. 

The troublesome thing about that is, once you start living by that, you then become accountable to your suffering. You can't blame it  on anyone or anything else. 

You are in choice. 

If you are choosing to suffer, then more power to ya, my friend. That is your free will. 

But once you're ready to release the burden and chains of suffering, you just have to put them down. You just have to make the choice. 

Choose to accept whatever is there. Choose to be gentle with whatever it is and allow it in your life to teach you what you need to learn. 

Choose to be thankful for the opportunities it is creating for you to grow. 

Don't fight it. Don't resist it. Don't judge it or hate it or try to get rid of it. Just let it be. The good, the bad, the painful, the emotional, the highs, the lows. All of it. 

Hang on to your peace with dear life so you can allow the fluctuations of life to pass through and around you. 

I won't sacrifice my peace for the sake of suffering. I won't make things worse by mentally torturing myself. I have the power to break the cycle of suffering. 

I just have to make the choice. ​