Eliminating Suffering in the World

#MakingBank: S3E40 with David Bayer

How much time do you spend suffering? Is it keeping you from fulfilling your personal development goals? Creating powerfully? According to David Bayer, the average person spends 4 hours a day in a suffering state, but what does that really mean?

A suffering state is any time you enter boredom, jealousy, anger, stress, anxiety, or overwhelm. “When you’re in a suffering state, you’re not creative, you’re not resourceful, you’re not present.” It robs you of your creative potential and keeps you from achieving optimal productivity and flow.

On the flip side, living in a beautiful state is calm, joy, curiosity, excitement, passion, connection, and presence. Sounds a lot better, right?

Most entrepreneurs are results-oriented, goal driven people with a strong vision for what they want to do and where they want to be. We align ourselves with like-minded individuals and keep track of the successful people in our field. Because of this, it is easy to slip into comparison, believing the narrative presented in our contemporaries social media accounts and assuming the world is going swimmingly for everyone but us.

You may believe that reaching that next performance level is the answer to eliminating your suffering, or that as you move into higher levels of performance that no one is suffering but you, but the truth is everyone is, you just don’t see it. The suffering doesn’t go away, in fact, a lot of times the more successful you become the more intense it grows.

From the Suffering State to the Beautiful State

David Bayer’s goal is to help people identify when they are in a suffering state and give them the skills to move as quickly as possible into a beautiful state of being. He believes the cause of suffering is not the experience itself, but the meaning you give that experience. What causes suffering for you might not for someone else as nothing is inherently stressful or boring or frustrating, it’s how you filter the experience that makes it so.

The friction you encounter that causes a negative effect stems from the relationship you’ve built to that specific scenario. “You’ve bought into an idea that’s not actually aligned with the truth of what is unfolding in front of you at the moment.” By adjusting your perception of your experience, your neural networks can reorganize and give a completely new meaning to that experience.

David gave an example of the friction he feels when his fiance gets on his case about the dishes and he suffers. He shares, “I believe that she shouldn’t be saying the things that she’s saying to me. My denial of the fact that this experience is taking place is what’s causing me suffering.” That belief causes David’s suffering. In recognizing that suffering he can examine the scenario, acknowledge that he expects reality to go differently than it is, clue into the pain his fiance is experiencing, and then the two of them can move out of suffering together by focusing on their connection and solving the suffering for the other person.

A Bigger Purpose

Another way to move out of a suffering state and into a beautiful state of being is pursuing a spiritual vision — whether that be a specific deity, relationship to nature, or something else, you live for a bigger purpose.

Practically speaking, you are here because your parents conceived you, spiritually you are here because you are a response, an answer to the need of something. Know that you are here to solve a problem, align yourself with that, pursue that living experience, because “if you’re chasing money and not your spiritual vision, you’re misaligned and more prone to living in suffering.”

How do you discover your spiritual vision?

1. Look at what you’re good at.

2. Look at what you enjoy.

3. Map the story of your life and how it’s unfolded, acknowledging that everything up until this point has positioned you to develop your character, skill set, and perspective to do this one thing.

4. Ask your higher power to help you notice the evidence in your life that can guide you to the specific purpose, and

…pursue it above all else.