You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts.
Pema ChodronAlthough it is embarrassing and painful, it is very healing to stop hiding from yourself. It is healing to know all the ways that youโre sneaky, all the ways that you hide out, all the ways that you shut down, deny, close off, criticize people, all your weird little ways. You can know all of that with some sense of humor and kindness. By knowing yourself, youโre coming to know humanness altogether. We are all up against these things. We are all in this together.
Pema ChodronAs long as we're caught up in always looking for certainty and happiness, rather than honoring the taste and smell and quality of exactly what is happening, as long as we're always running from discomfort, we're going to be caught in a cycle of unhappiness and discomfort, and we will feel weaker and weaker. This way of seeing helps us develop inner strength. And what's especially encouraging is the view that inner strength is available to us at just the moment when we think that we've hit the bottom, when things are at their worst.
Pema Chodron