We are living in difficult times. Many people are suffering right now. You may be one of them. People are out of work, losing their homes, struggling to get by, and wondering how they’ll make ends meet. And even if they still have a job and a home, they worry about their future and the well-being of their families, their children, and the planet. Many of these concerns are timeless and have been with us since the dawn of recorded history—and probably longer.

But struggles, challenges, and fears extend far beyond our own lives, our own local reach. We’re also faced with daily reminders of the suffering of other human beings, the unpredictability and seeming inevitability of pain and our own capacity to suffer. You’ll see this locally and more globally with poverty and homelessness, wars and violence, disease and illness, famine and starvation, and accidents and natural disasters.

We suffer in other, less tangible ways, too, through stigmatization, prejudice, marginalization, objectification, and dehumanization. You’ll see it in your home, your workplace, the grocery store, the playground, and in areas of life that you care deeply about. You’ll experience it yourself in times of anger, anxiety, depression, sadness, disappointment, regret, loss, death, illness, or despair. Just about everything we do can be touched by suffering.

All human beings carry the capacity to suffer in innumerable ways. We can suffer about a past that once was, our present circumstances, and a future that is yet to be. We can suffer about what we look like, what we think, what we remember, what we feel, and what we do. We can suffer in trying to be something or someone other than who we are, to feel something other than what we feel, or to think better, differently, or not at all. And we can suffer in good times just as easily as in bad. Suffering has been with us for as long as we know. Good fortune or economic recovery is no protection from this simple truth.

We can also struggle with our own pain and suffering, or the suffering of others, to the point where we end up like feeling stuck, with no way out. Powerless to move forward, we remain on the sidelines. We watch as our suffering grows larger and becomes more central and our lives shrink around us to the size of a postage stamp. This can leave even the best of us feeling alone and disconnected from what matters.

It’s so easy to lose sight of what matters in difficult times. In a way, it’s like living in a world filled with big, hungry lions. Evolution has prepared us to protect ourselves in such a world, and as a result we are quite good at focusing all of our attention and energies on the lions in our midst. As we go into self-preservation mode, we narrow and harden. This keeps us safe—at least when we’re actually in danger of being harmed or eaten.

But in the modern world most of us don’t have to face real lions. We do have to face our own pain and suffering and that of others. In a sense, this is the psychological equivalent of having a hungry lion or two following us wherever we go. And as those hungry lions pull for our attention and energy, our attention shifts to the suffering and away from doing what matters. In that shift, the rest of the world—full of so many other things to look at and do—washes away. We lose our bearings, and our lives become about avoiding and managing our lions—our pain and suffering.

You’ll notice that we didn’t offer a personal story here. The story of the lions is a story about all of us. The three of us have our lions, and you do too. We all have the capacity to suffer. And despite the trappings of the modern world, filled with numerous technological advances and creature comforts, we haven’t found a healthy way to escape human suffering. Nobody has that magic solution.

Notice that this isn’t just about walking away. Heck, if the solution to suffering was like pulling your hand back from a hot stove, we’d say, “Do it. Just pull back and walk away.” (And if we were speaking about real lions, we’d say do the same—and do it fast!) But this isn’t the solution to human suffering. When we walk away from our suffering, we also tend to walk away from things that matter to us. So walking away has costs that can deeply diminish your life.

Maybe you feel as though your suffering has taken over your life. Or perhaps your experience is that pain and suffering have eclipsed any sense of what matters to you. The hurt has become central. You just don’t know what you care about anymore.

Or maybe you’re like millions of other people and do have a sense of what matters. Yet when you take a step forward, you find that the lions pop up out of nowhere and threaten to eat you alive. So, tired and frustrated, you retreat into the comfortable and safe. Maybe you’re looking for a way out of this cycle and back into your life.

If any of this resonates with you, you’re not alone. And while we can’t promise you a way to kill off your lions or lock them away, we can offer you a way to tame them so that you can move forward in ways that matter to you.

excerpt from Your Life on Purpose: How to Find What Matters and Create the Life You Want by Matthew McKay Ph.D., John P. Forsyth Ph.D., and Georg H. Eifert Ph.D.