Now and again life throws us in the deep end and tells us to swim. There is no choice but to fight. We find ourselves in overwhelming situations that we don’t know how to deal with. It could be anything, stress at home, death of a loved one, a personal illness or a case of serious depression. In this article you will find a few ways to deal with the pain and hardships that you will encounter in your life. I hope it inspires you to take the bull by its horns and be strong.
It is important to remember that pain and hardships are inevitable. No one can escape them. Every single one of us, at some point in our life, will experience pain, suffering and hardships of some form or another. The quicker that this is accepted the easier it is to be present and alert to what life throws at us. Accepting this should inspire and liberate as you now have a chance to prepare for it. People who prepare are never as badly affected as those who don’t, this is a fact.
If you want to learn to deal with pain and hardship you need to realise that you have an amazing opportunity to grow as a person. You can prove to yourself that you are strong. You can show yourself that you have strength of character and will-power. The amazing thing about hardships and pain is that they present you with a rare opportunity to grow into a strong and decent human being.
If you always operate within your comfort, you will never develop and the world becomes a mundane place. If you dip your toes into the unknown you may feel slight discomfort for a little while, but if you get through this your comfort zone stretches out and you show yourself you have the strength to get through the hardship.
Remind yourself that pain and hardship is temporary. It is impermanent as nothing at all in this world lasts forever. Try to scale yourself out of the problem and take a macro perspective on life and the ‘issues’ it presents. Be mindful of your impact and know that like attracts like, so if you are positive, positive things will come.
The next time you are going through some pain or hardships you can remind yourself that it won’t last. You can look at everything in history and feel secure in knowing that, no matter how bad things seem now, the problems won’t last forever. What a wonderful thing! Like all things, suffering is also impermanent. Think back to times you thought you would never get through. Now think about exactly how you did. Reminding yourself of your resilience will pull you through even the most difficult issues.
Know that you are not alone and take power from knowing that other people are going through some sort of upset in their life. Sometimes when you are down, you can feel isolated. Remember that you are not alone and you really don’t know what is happening in people’s life. Seek counsel in a friend or someone you trust. When you pen up you will find you get a boost of some really powerful strength. You get a sense of community and friendship.
Also, remember that you are a spiritual being. So much time is spent on nurturing our bodies, pandering to a material world and generally focusing on things that are temporary. Remind yourself of your spiritual values.
Be in silence, alone, for a minimum of an hour. Notice what is going on in your mind, what are you telling yourself. Decide what you are going to do with the voices, split your thoughts (after writing them down) into two categories: positive – helpful to me, negative – unhelpful to me. Focus your energy on the positive; make the most of these thoughts and the least on the negative. Scrub them out and realise that they are like a disease, carrying pollution that will definitely impact and cloud your mind.
‘Lastly, remember that time is a great healer, and if easier focus on the next 5 minutes at a time to make the healing easier. Don’t worry too much about tomorrow and be focused on getting through as positively as you can with strength and grace, minute by minute.
Good Luck.