What Are Your 10,000 Joys and 10,000 Sorrows?

Image by Madison Oren

There is an oft-quoted Taoist saying that every human life contains 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. Meaning, it’s human to suffer, to struggle with painful emotions like sadness, loneliness or anxiety. But it’s also inherently human to experience positive feelings like joy, pleasure, happiness, love and pride. A rich, well-lived human life involves experiencing – and allowing ourselves to truly feel – all of our feelings, both pleasant and unpleasant.

As this is my last post of 2023, I am in a reflective mood, looking back over the past year and digesting everything that has happened, both good and bad. I also spend a lot (too much, according to my loved ones!) of time thinking about my 56 years of life on this planet, all the things I have experienced, that shaped me, that made me, me. And this reflective process can be a double-edged sword, as when I’m feeling a bit down, it can easily turn into a self-critical rumination, my Inner Critic reminding me about all the things I have said or done that I feel bad about in some way. Not helpful.

But on more balanced days, I can also remember moments of great joy. I had lunch with a dear friend recently and she asked me what skydiving was like (I tried skydiving back in my journalist days, when I would go on crazy adventures and then write about them). I did a tandem skydive and remember it with crystal clarity – the sheer terror of jumping out of a plane at 12,000 feet, plummeting towards Earth at lunatic speed and every cell in my body screaming, ‘We’re going to die!’

And then, my instructor pulled the rip cord and all that plummeting terror instantly stopped as we floated slowly towards the ground, silently circling above the stunning Oxfordshire landscape of verdant hills, fields and woodland. It was the closest I have ever come to flying and it was… blissful. I can still taste the sheer joy (and relief at the knowledge I was not actually going to die!), the visceral sense of freedom and in-your-bones wonder and beauty of that experience. Magical.

The practice: Focus on your joys

So here’s a little assignment for you over the Christmas break – try journalling about the 10,000 joys and sorrows of your life. If you’re like me, and most people who struggle with their mental health at times, it’s a good idea to just bullet-point the sorrows, without going into too much depth. And definitely don’t try and think of 10,000! Just do a timeline of the big, tricky stuff in your life, with a sentence or two for each.

That’s because every human brain has a built-in negativity bias, so we focus on anything that could be threatening – painful memories, worries about the future, problems in our life – in great detail, while only giving fleeting attention to the good stuff that happens all the time. It comes and goes, without sticking in your mind and brain.

Then spend a lot more time on your 10,000 joys, even if it’s hard to think of many. As with all of the practices I recommend, there is no right or wrong way of doing this, just have a go and see what happens. And remember that the more we focus on good stuff – happy memories, moments of triumph or achievement, kind words or gestures from friends and loved ones, the birth of a child or first kiss with a beloved – the more we correct that negativity bias. We start to focus more on good, pleasant or enjoyable experiences, moment to moment and day to day, which over time rewires our brain to think about and feel those things more deeply.

And if you would like help with this rewiring process and focusing more on the joys, try my Hardwiring Happiness: Talk & Meditation practice on Insight Timer. It’s based on a brilliantly simple practice by Rick Hanson, from his book Hardwiring Happiness: How to Reshape Your Brain and Your Life. I love this practice and use it all the time with my clients, who seem to love it too. Just click on the button below to try it now.

I hope that helps. And I hope you have a wonderful, restful, restorative break over the festive season. Thank you so much for your support, connection, comments and kindness throughout 2023, in response to my teaching, to my Insight Timer practices, through my various social-media channels and via email – I am so grateful and deeply appreciate every one of you.

I have some exciting plans for 2024, including my first-ever 7-day course for Insight Timer, so stay tuned to these posts for more details about that and other upcoming events in the year ahead.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

The Buddha Taught Us How to Avoid Turning Pain into Suffering

Image by Abhijeet Gourav

I turn 56 in a couple of months and, although there are many things I like about growing older, there are some definite drawbacks. Wrinkles, back pain and various minor health ailments – none of these are much fun. But the biggest drawback for me is the change in my sleep pattern. And especially my brain’s newfound trick of waking me up at 5am every day, for no apparent reason.

I really need my sleep. Eight hours every night would be good, but nine is probably my sleep sweet spot. Six hours, which I got last night, really doesn’t do it for me. I’m currently on my fourth coffee of the day, which helps, but is no substitute for a good night’s sleep.

My eyes feel kind of scratchy, everything is a bit of a struggle and it’s hard to escape the feeling that you’re dragging yourself through the day, waiting for that glorious moment when you can go back to bed and hope for a better slumber tonight. This is all a bit painful, especially because I understand the increasingly persuasive science around the importance of sleep for our mental and physical health.

Turning pain into suffering

Luckily, I know enough about Buddhist psychology to understand how not to turn this pain into suffering. This was one of the Buddha’s many great insights – he taught that human life is inherently painful. We all get older, every day. There is nothing we can do about that, however much we might dislike it or slather on anti-ageing potions to hold on to our youthful looks. And with age often comes illness. Again, there is a lot we can do to prevent that, but some illnesses will inevitably come with advancing years.

The biggest, scariest truth we all have to face is that one day this will all come to an end. This is the hardest thing that any human has to grapple with – we are not immortal and so our time on this planet is finite.

All of this brings pain in the form of stress, worry, anxiety, sadness and other difficult emotions. And this pain is inevitable, to a greater or lesser extent – we can’t get rid of or avoid it completely, however hard we try. But the Buddha also taught that we then turn this inevitable pain into avoidable suffering through the way we respond to the initial discomfort.

He famously used the metaphor of a first and second arrow to explain this to his followers. When we feel pain, it’s as if we are hit by an arrow – this hurts, of course. But when, for example, we feel loneliness as our ‘first-arrow’ pain, but then start thinking, ‘I can’t stand feeling lonely, it’s the worst feeling in the world,’ or, ‘God, I’m so lonely – and I always will be. I just know I will never find someone to love,’ we add the second arrow of suffering.

Just feeling the pain is enough

Knowing this, I have become much more skilled at not turning my first-arrow pain of tiredness into second-arrow suffering. I used to think, ‘Oh man, I am so tired. I just hate this. I know I will feel terrible all day, it will affect my work and I won’t be 100% in my sessions today, which means I am letting my clients down…’ and on it would go, until I felt thoroughly depressed, on top of the tiredness.

Now – today, for example – I just think, ‘Oh well, I’m just tired. It’s not the worst thing in the world. Many people are suffering greatly right now, so this isn’t that big a deal in the grand scheme of things.’ And… I just feel tired. No depression. No unpleasant rumination. I just get on with the day, which seems to go much better.

Now I’m not saying this is easy, especially if the pain you feel is far greater than my relatively mild tired-and-scratchy feeling. Struggling with the impact of trauma, being highly anxious and panicky, or deeply depressed, are clearly much worse and harder to manage. But the same principles do apply – if you can just feel the pain, whatever it is, without piling on a whole load more mental and emotional suffering, you will feel less anxious, less panicky, less depressed.

And if you are feeling some kind of emotional pain right now, this practice I recorded for Insight Timer might help: Soothing Painful Emotions with the Breath.

I hope you do find it helpful – sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan