Sometimes life leads us to experience difficult moments .
We seek comfort, a word, advice.
An unexpected event, the loss of a loved one, a marriage crisis lead to feeling that great weight inside, not knowing how and what to do until one remains motionless in that situation hoping for help from heaven.
In these situations it is easy to fall prey to pessimism and sadness without seeing any way out.
The goal of serenity becomes difficult to achieve.
For this reason, any advice or suggestion is accepted because it can help you feel better.
Painful moments are events from the natural cycle. Life is made up of ups and downs, the difference is how we respond to these moments.
Difficult moments always have something to teach us, they change us inside, they lead us to discover unknown, sometimes denied parts of us.
How to overcome these moments’
Content index
- How to get through difficult times
- 7 steps to overcome difficult moments
- Nurture gratitude
- To move on
- Look at yourself objectively
- Learn a lesson
- Breathe
- Forgive
- Be responsible
How to get through difficult times
The very first reaction to difficult moments is to run away.
Running away means putting blindfolds over your eyes and pretending that there is no problem, it is feeling a great fear of facing the situation.
To evolve as people we need to take charge of our lives, to overcome these moments and to transform difficult moments into teachings.
There are people who make it, others who don’t, the difference is that the other faces the difficulties.
Don’t panic or fear.
What to do to overcome difficult moments?
To get through difficult times, you should:
- deal with suffering ;
- process the emotions related to pain;
- avoid complaining and constantly letting off steam.
To face suffering and free yourself from pain we think it’s right to flee.
We can run away to the end of the world, the pain will always be with us, it will be our friend as will our wound. The only solution to overcome difficult moments is to live them.
Pain must be crossed, lived, felt deeply within ourselves.
Life often puts us in front of particular situations, of suffering because it wants us to learn from them to evolve and find new ways out.
When I think of pain I remember Dante’s words at the beginning of the canto of the Inferno: In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself in a dark forest .
For whatever reason everyone, without exception, we find ourselves living in this forest feeling lost and without strength.
Dante continues his journey and as he continues through the forest, he attributes to it a meaning of passage that will lead him to achieve serenity, peace. Hope is the engine that pushes us to continue on that road, to grit our teeth while feeling the suffering within ourselves and to believe that sooner or later we will see the sun.
Going through pain means going on a journey of transformation.
Because as we go through this pain it happens to process our emotions.
It’s a process.
Processing the negative emotions that surface during difficult moments leads us to be fully aware of what is happening to us and to have full power to manage them.
Emotions are involuntary, they create themselves, they show up in us based on how we perceive an experience. Our responsibility lies in choosing whether to let them manage us or learn to govern them.
Especially in situations like these.
Processing is a process that allows you to name the emotion, to recognize it but not to act prey to it. It allows us not to react instinctively such as to destroy relationships, relationships.
If we reject emotions or deny them they remain deep inside us and continue to act leading to a reactive life.
We need to develop so-called emotional intelligence .
The great master in this matter is the psychologist Daniel Goleman.
“Emotional intelligence determines our potential to learn practical skills based on its five elements: self-awareness and self-mastery, motivation, empathy, and interpersonal skills.”
Daniel Goleman
Thanks to emotional intelligence we understand our needs, those related to that specific moment and nurture important skills such as compassion towards us, awareness, listening to the heart and empathy.
Skills that allow us to welcome feelings and emotions, as well as ourselves.
Finally, to overcome difficult moments it is good to put a stop to constant complaining .
Complaining is bad for our brain.
When we complain we transmit negative thoughts and vibes to the point that those who listen to us struggle to be fully present. Complaining is part of man’s nature because he is perpetually dissatisfied but that doesn’t help to have an optimistic approach to life.
Continuing to complain will not get us out of the situation we are in.
For this reason, if we want to commit ourselves to changing the difficult situations we are experiencing, we must stop feeding our complaints.
The focus will be on positive thoughts that help to release vital, proactive, active energy to implement concrete actions.
Real changes are the result of commitment, courage and a lot of optimism.
We accept our life for what it is in order to achieve our inner peace .
Thanks to this peace we will learn not to expect anything from anyone, not to create false expectations because we do not have power over everyone and everything.
7 steps to overcome difficult moments
How to survive in difficult times?
Life is made up of unknowns, now everything is fine tomorrow we don’t know that’s why we must learn to be ready for any unexpected event that happens to us.
Difficult moments are difficult yes, but not insurmountable. There is a medicine for them.
Let’s ask ourselves if we’re willing to hire her to prepare ourselves emotionally to face what we never expected.
Below are 7 steps to follow to overcome difficult times.
Nurture gratitude
Gratitude is the foundation in everything that happens to us in life because it always leads to looking at the glass half full .
Is our love affair or your work not as we would like?
Surely there is something we can be thankful for.
Children, health, money, life etc… there’s always a reason to live.
We must learn to recognize it.
If we’ve been taught to only look at the negative sides, to complain or play victims we can change this pattern by looking at the good things that surround our everyday lives.
It’s always sunny outside!
Gratitude is an attitude capable of protecting us in difficult situations.
It’s a life saver.
A demonstration of love that benefits us first of all and then also those who receive it by transforming all those bad feelings such as envy, anger, jealousy, victimhood.
Let us stand up and give thanks that if we didn’t learn a lot, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die. Therefore we are grateful. There will always be something worth thanking for.
Buddha
To move on
We are standing there, motionless in this moment because we see no way out.
This means looking at the situation as a failure and ruminating about what we should have done and didn’t do. It goes without saying that this is the wrong approach.
Let’s move forward in small steps, taking back those things that make us happy, those passions that we put in the drawer due to lack of time. Life doesn’t stop in front of situations that make us feel bad, it continues, it urges us to move forward and find a purpose.
Difficulties are not eternal.
These tough times can turn into golden times if we learn to turn suffering into fuel that drives us to fight back.
Serenity and happiness remain the only fundamental objectives to be achieved.
Look at yourself objectively
It is important never to forget who has given us a hand in times of difficulty and, above all, ourselves.
Surely in the past we have also experienced successes, we have been able to get out of situations that seem impossible. We are always quick to forget the positive parts of us, what we have done to focus only on a negative present.
Let’s give ourselves a big pat on the back for how good we did.
To strengthen confidence in ourselves and believe that we will succeed soon, we write down all our successes, all those situations that have brought us here. Next we write the actions done.
It might be enlightening to discover that today we can do something we’ve done in the past that has unblocked us from fear.
Learn a lesson
Everything that happens to us wants to teach us something.
There is a beautiful card that I pulled from Italo Pentimalli’s Alchimie deck that reads like this: ” If you don’t see and you don’t learn from what happens, repeat until you understand it “.
Every difficult moment, obstacle or difficulty in our life wants to teach us something. Until we learn the lesson we will keep repeating the same patterns, mistakes until we give up and suffer what happens to us.
Breathe
Breathing is an automatic act that we perform almost without realizing it even if it is linked to our emotional state. When we are agitated, in anger, at not knowing what to do, our heartbeat increases as does our breathing. It becomes shallower, shorter.
This mechanism also works in reverse.
When we want to reduce moments of stress and agitation we can resort to longer breaths that lead to calming down. It is a simple, handy and free method.
Why not use it?
When we feel overwhelmed by negative emotional states, by thoughts that crowd our mind, just lie down or sit down, close your eyes and focus on your breath.
It is a technique that I also recommend in moments when we feel we want to give an instinctive and reactive response to those in front of us because their speech has annoyed us and made unpleasant emotions rise within us. Breathing helps us to give the right answer assertively.
Forgive
When we go through difficult times the first thing we do is blame the other or God for the situation we are experiencing. A gesture that leads to venting feelings and emotions that we feel inside thinking we’ll feel good afterwards.
Does blaming the other really help to improve the situation?
The answer is no.
Especially when it comes to emotional wounds or love disappointments. When we are rejected, we feel abandoned by the other and we perceive her behavior as if it were a stab in the heart, a betrayal so we try to reciprocate with the same coin and take revenge.
The relief is only momentary because, with hindsight and a clear mind, we regret how we behaved.
Often we do not have the right tools that can help us deal with certain situations.
For this we first of all need time to heal our wounds and to get out of the vicious circle of criticism.
Healing one’s wounds means observing ourselves, looking at where all our suffering comes from without blaming or blaming ourselves.
Forgiveness plays an important role in this .
I know it’s not easy nor is it an act that we all share.
I can say with certainty that forgiveness is able to heal us deeply by learning to look at people for who they are, to welcome events, to make peace with ourselves to keep alive only the beautiful emotions that a past relationship has given us. .
To forgive we need to have an emotional maturity that shifts our gaze from the other to our interiority.
Be responsible
Stephen Convey, a well-known businessman who wrote “The seven rules of success” teaches us to manage events and not suffer them through the 90/10 principle .
According to this principle we have an important role in our lives especially when unexpected events or moments that are difficult to manage happen.
We can learn to change how we react to the situation in order to live even the darkest days with serenity. Stephen Convey to explain this principle gives an example: the one in which a cup of coffee is spilled on our shirt.
What is first reaction?
Getting angry, shouting and starting the day in a bad mood.
Compared to the event itself we are not to blame but we can intervene on our reactions to that event.
Preventing the cup of coffee from spilling on our shirt perhaps we could not have avoided it, but the reaction is. By reacting differently we wouldn’t have ruined our day, we wouldn’t have responded badly to our children or partners, we wouldn’t have forgotten to close the windows and argued with the employer.
We would have avoided triggering an unhealthy chain of reactions.
Taking the example of our difficult moments, we could say that what we can intervene on are our moods. By reacting differently, our brain will be predisposed to find a solution and experience the day/period as a natural succession of events.
Now that we have the map to follow to improve our lives, all we have to do is put these steps into practice and embrace the courage to bring change into our lives .
