Think about the range of people having affinity for or aversion to spiders; some people may not even give spiders a second thought, and others may be deathly afraid and experience panic at the mere suggestion of one. The people who accept spiders as a part of life don’t necessarily love them or want them all over their bodies all day. The difference is that they are willing to tolerate spiders as an unavoidable part of life. They know that can control some things to help limit spiders in their home (close windows, clean cobwebs, check for holes/cracks), but they can’t always guarantee that all of those measures work or that when they leave their homes and enter into the larger world outside their control that they won’t run into spiders there. So if they happen to see a spider, they don’t like it, it’s not their favorite thing, but they can tolerate the situation and figure out their best course of action forward. Meanwhile, the person who is basically phobic of spiders will spend a lot of time thinking about spiders, startled because they thought they saw one out of the corner of their eye, terrified because a friend invited them on a trip to Hawaii where they heard spiders were as big as your hand (it’s true!) so they turned that great opportunity down.

Now compare negative emotions to spiders. They can be scary. They can cause pain. They feel outside your control. They can show up in unexpected places, and they aren’t exactly what you plan on. That being said, they are also inevitable, completely necessary to the functioning of a larger system, and—most importantly—are temporary. If I go through life terrified of being hurt in a relationship so then I avoid relationships, I am not avoiding pain, just trading in for a different kind. I am trading in the pain of relationships for the pain of isolation. If I am petrified of “failure” so I never try anything new or put myself in challenging situations I am trading in the pain of making a mistake for the pain of never having tried or feeling stagnant, watching everyone else move forward while I feel paralyzed and stuck. There is distress either way, but one path is in service of my values, goals, and meaningful pursuits, while the other path is only in service of avoidance that eventually causes more pain and only takes me farther from the things that matter to me.

I’m not saying pain is out there so let’s all go run after and give up on protecting ourselves. Acknowledging that pain as an unavoidable part of life doesn’t mean I’m resigning myself to a life of pain, it means I recognize it as a part, a temporary and necessary part, of a larger system. I can still try to minimize and limit my exposure to this uncomfortable thing, but inevitably that uncomfortable feeling will present itself, and if I can tolerate (not enjoy, not like, not agree with) that discomfort in the moment then I open myself up to pursuing the things that I value and the things that are meaningful. If I’ve convinced myself that the pain would be too much to bear and the prospect is just too scary, then I will arrange my life and take action from a place of fear as opposed to a place of value or meaning, so double-whammy, I will not feel connected to anything meaningful and I will be in pain anyway!

I need to be able to recognize that the uncomfortable emotion is simply an inevitable part of something bigger. It is appropriate. It is understandable given the context within which it is being experienced. Moreover, it is temporary. If I can learn how to sit with—not run away from, not avoid—sit with, work through, tolerate, distract, hope, connect, grieve, write, breathe, cry, or whatever else I need to do in the face of an uncomfortable negative emotion, then it stops having all the power in the world over me, and I am free to more openly and explicitly pursue the things that actually matter—and that is what makes us happy.