When times are tough, it’s difficult to stay focused on your goals and aspirations. You may find yourself wondering when the hardships in your life will go away. The truth is, life’s hardships never truly fade away. You can use this to your advantage, though, by viewing these challenges as opportunities.
The more you’re able to view life’s tests as catalysts for growth, the better prepared you’ll be to sail through them.
Pain can serve as a beacon in the darkness, a torch that illuminates the path. Pain – whether physical or mental – is an indication that something, somewhere, isn’t right. Psychological pain is often the result of unresolved issues that are smoldering beneath the surface. Only by confronting these issues, by bringing them to the surface, can you move beyond them. Everything has an opposite, and pain is the opposite of joy. If not for pain, we would have no understanding of joy as a state of being. Don’t run from pain. Instead, face it head-on and ask yourself, “What is the cause of my pain?”
How you react to hardship often determines how much of it you will experience. Your reactions have immediate and lasting effects on both your body and mind and choosing to act instead of reacting can free you from habitual behavior that might be causing challenges in the first place. When you swim in a lake or an ocean, you know perfectly well that the crash of one wave leads to the cresting of another. Life operates in the same way, so expect each swell to bring with it its own challenge. Avoid letting negativity color your perceptions.
Most fears are not representative of reality. It’s important that you differentiate between fears that stem from physical threats and fears that arise in the mind. These mental fears are meant to keep you from taking unnecessary risks. Only with repeated exposure to discomfort can you convince your subconscious mind that it has nothing to fear from these non-physical threats.
Taking action with these concepts in mind will help you find solutions for many of your challenges. When you can manage the present, the future will take care of itself.
