We don't actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. Some of the best and most gratifying experiences of our lives are also the most distracting and demotivating. Don't trust your conception of positive/negative experiences. All that we know for certain is what hurts us in the moment and what doesn't. And that's not worth much.

Fear and anxiety and sadness are not necessarily always undesirable or unhelpful states of mind; rather, they are often representatives of the necessary pain of psychological growth. And to deny that pain is to deny our own potential.

When we deny ourselves the ability to feel pain for a purpose, we deny ourselves the ability to feel any purpose in our life at all.

Our most radical changes in perspective often happen at the tail end of our worst moments. It's only when we feel intense pain that we're willing to look at our values and question why they seem to be failing us. We need some sort of existential crisis to take an objective look at how we've been deriving meaning in our life, and then consider changing course. (p.154)

Learn to sustain the pain you've chosen. When you choose a new value, you are choosing to introduce a new form of pain into your life. Relish it. Savour it. Welcome it with open arms. Then act despite it.

Often the only difference between a problem being painful or being powerful is a sense that we chose it, and that we are responsible for it. We don't always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond.