Hey there Reader,
On my 50th birthday, Ben and I did a Golden Triangle tour in India, followed by a 10-day cruise as part of a package trip.
We were joined by another five New Zealanders, and for the first part of the journey, our small group was crammed into a van together, day after day, for hours on end, as we travelled from one site to the next.
It was inevitable we got to know each other quickly and deeply.
My husband and I connected with one of the older couples in particular.
The husband had studied Buddhism for years, and the idea of acceptance was a common refrain.
Whether we were talking about the loss of his son to cancer the year before, or the fact I’d been needing the toilet for 30 minutes and we were still another hour away from stopping, he would come out with the same phrase:
It is so, and cannot be any other way.
I understood what he meant.
I’ve accepted things, big and small, at different times.
But I’ve also added a lot of suffering on top of them.
🔍 One thing to notice
Pay attention to what happens when something isn’t how you want it to be.
Something small. Or something that stays.
Notice how quickly something else gets added.
This shouldn’t be happening.
Why is this still going?
When will it change?
There’s the thing itself.
And then there’s everything that comes with it.
🌍 A wider lens
There’s a Buddhist teaching sometimes described as the two arrows. In the Sallattha Sutta, the image is of a person struck by one arrow and then struck again by a second.
The first arrow is what happens: the pain, the situation, the thing you didn’t choose.
The second arrow is what we add on top of it: the resistance, the frustration, and the sense that it shouldn’t be this way.
The first arrow is unavoidable. The second is where much of the suffering comes from, because it is created by the way we respond to what’s already there.
This is where acceptance sits. Not as resignation or giving up, but as a way of recognising what is actually happening and not adding further struggle to it.
When something is accepted, it doesn’t necessarily change, but the extra layer of suffering often diminishes if not disappears.
There’s a similar idea in psychology. It’s not about ignoring what’s happening or pretending it’s fine, but understanding that suffering is shaped not only by the situation itself, but by how much we resist it.
✔️ Try this
When something isn’t how you want it to be, pause for a moment.
Ask yourself:
What is the first arrow here? And what am I adding on top of it?
If you’d like to go a bit deeper with ideas like this, you can join my book club here:
👉 Click to join the book club
If you’re thinking about coaching more generally, you can find out more here:
👉 Click to explore coaching