Written by Jen Liu

 “It's true that reducing suffering often has to do with letting go of negative mental fixations and building resilience in times of hardship. But the other side of that same coin involves learning how to accept the successes and wins of our lives, too, with stability and clarity.”

You land the dream job. A relationship finally feels easy. Or maybe you’re just in a stretch of feeling relatively calm where nothing’s falling apart — and then a strange tension creeps in. A pressure to hold onto it. A fear of when it will end. What do we do when things are going well, but suffering still finds its way in?

It's true that reducing suffering often has to do with letting go of negative mental fixations and building resilience in times of hardship. But the other side of that same coin involves learning how to accept the successes and wins of our lives, too, with stability and clarity.

Without a balanced view, positive experiences can act as hooks that sneakily tether us further to illusory ideas of self and permanence. Favorable outcomes can work in tandem with their less favorable counterparts to ensnare us in a painful pattern of expectation and disappointment. More than a straightforward downward spiral, the cycle of suffering often involves this kind of oscillation between highs and lows.

To cultivate a perspective that allows us to hold many different types of experiences with a stable and supportive center, we can apply some of the same principles we practice in challenging situations to times of abundance and smooth-sailing.

Equanimity, for example, teaches us to primarily work with what is in our control — our composure and balance across different terrains — instead of letting our experience be determined by whether circumstances seem pleasant or unpleasant. By practicing equanimity in times of relative ease and comfort, we can learn to hold gratitude without fostering entitlement or desensitization.

When peak experiences flood and overwhelm us with positive ideation, remembering to practice equanimity can be crucial in helping us glean the beneficial properties of joy without simultaneously absorbing side effects of greed or delusion.

We can also sit with the contemplation of impermanence in times of calm, not just crisis, to prepare ourselves mentally and emotionally for the reality that all things, good and bad, will change. When our view is supported by these pillars, we can go beyond having a superficial relationship to happiness and become able to steward it in a more meaningful way.

Our practice becomes more whole when we learn how to hold joy in our lives with the same mindful awareness with which we practice holding pain.