Increasing Tolerance For Discomfort (Video) 2:04mins

[Transcript] 

Ooh, it's chuffing freezing today.  Or is it?

I'm out on a country walk, a bit of a stroll, first time in a while actually, and the wind's just picked up, and my initial reaction to that was, ooooh, it's freezing, but no sooner had that happened that what came to mind was this is a perfect moment to bring some mindfulness.

And so as I paid attention to my reaction, I was able to ask myself the question, how much of that unpleasant experience is coming from just the physical sensation of cold meeting the body?

And how much of it is being driven by the aversion of the mind?

See, no matter what's going on in any moment, particularly when there's unpleasantness going on, there's two things happening.

The thing that is actually physically being experienced and then there is the conditioned reactions and stories and judgments being driven by aversion in our minds.

And a healthy thing to do is just to ask that question. What is the actual experience of this like?

Can I be curious about it? Can I just pay attention to it with interest? And momentarily just drop the stories of the mind and notice what that does to the intensity of the situation.

When we do that, we often find that we have far greater capacity to be with difficult things, uncomfortable, unpleasant things,  with a lot more tolerance.

Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds like a very healthy thing to be able to pull upon whenever we need it.