From Alison Murdoch, a Tibetan Buddhist:

"Last week, a friend shared an unsettling story about something that happened when her daughter was three years old. The child had spent nearly a month in hospital with pneumonia, and been given a pair of ‘princess shoes’ – the kind of coloured glittery shoes that little girls dream of. On the way home from the hospital, she started being rude to her mother. Despite being told off, she contorted her face and shrieked “I can say and do anything I want!” The mother replied that as a punishment for rudeness, the princess shoes would be thrown out. Later that evening, tears secretly streaming down her face, my friend put the precious shoes, still unworn, in the bin.

The story left me full of doubts and questions. Was it an act of kindness, or of cruelty? Did the end justify the means? Would I ever be capable of such tough love? Yet seven years on, that particular mother daughter relationship seems particularly warm, close and honest – perhaps because of what happened to those princess shoes.

Looking back on my life, I can see that the most powerful and lasting lessons have all been learnt through pain and struggle. The rest of the time, I tend to be on cruise control. As a teenage temp, the appropriately-named Mrs Savage taught a lasting lesson on punctuality. And I didn’t know anything about loyalty and courage until a close friend developed leukaemia.

In Tibetan Buddhism, there’s a whole category of teachings known as ‘lojong’ – which translates as ‘transforming problems’ - on the basis that difficulties can be consciously welcomed as opportunities to learn something new and gain inner strength.

Life is full of difficulties – we don’t have any choice about that. The choice we do have is whether to distract ourselves and gloss over them, or be open to whatever they can teach us."