“No matter what kind of challenges or difficulties or painful situations you go through in your life, we all have something deep within us that we can reach down and find the inner strength to get through them.” – Alana Stewart
Ups and downs, rises and falls, rain and shine, joy and sorrow, day and night – this is how people define life: a series of events, sometimes jolly, sometimes painfully full of sorrow. Well, that is what life is as we know it.
There are many situations in life which we can classify as difficult. A wise thing to do is to be prepared to face the difficult times in our lives. These times usually affect us deeply on a psychological level and could potentially damage our lives.
Being prepared for these times could help us to improve how we live our lives. Being prepared to face challenges is what it means to learn and grow. The idea is to make the best out of everything life throws at us.
Below we discuss some of the toughest situations we come across in our lives and how we can best deal with them.
10 Difficult Life Situations and How to Get Through It
Remember, most of these situations are not under our control. So the logical method to deal with these circumstances is to accept and move on.
1. Quarter-life, Midlife Crisis
As we age, we see ourselves changing physically and mentally. So, there come times during our aging process that we seek answers about the changes happening to and around us. After adolescence, between our early 20s and early 30s, we begin to make choices on how to best fit into society.
This transition period could be difficult for some of us to handle, which turns into the ‘quarter-life crisis’. The sheer amount of confusion and pressure often leads to situations like depression or potentially even acts of self-harm.
During the process of aging, there comes another phase called ‘midlife crisis, in between the early 40s and early 50s when we begin to truly feel our mortality. These are times when we have to deal with lots of changes which we naturally, as humans, find difficult to deal with. Knowing that the changes are inevitable and finding the strength to accept the changes is the only way to find courage and get through these times of crisis.
2. Breakups
Love happens and breakups too. And it goes without saying, breakups are heart breaking. When all those feelings of love suddenly turns into something vile, it becomes painful to handle.
What’s there to be done after breakups? Accept that it happened for the best of reasons, keep your mind busy doing something productive and know that love happens again. The pain subsides like it always does. Turn the pain into motivation to bring a positive change in your life. (Join a gym, perhaps, and sweat it all out.)
3. Changing Friendship
Being social beings, we seek love and friendship. These are undoubtedly the most important aspects of having an overall healthy life. We simply cannot do without friends because we aren’t made to survive alone. We seek and keep friends to help us grow. So a changing friendship can be a difficult thing to deal with. Letting go of friends and adapting to new faces as you leave behind what you had come to love can be challenging.
But people come and go. This is yet another inevitable truth about life. We’ve all read those cheeky lines on the internet like “Those who want to stay in your life will find ways to do so” and they’re true. Don’t be afraid to accept and let go of people and welcome new people into your life.
4. Failures
Failures are difficult times, of course. They are difficult on many levels. Not meeting goals you’ve worked so hard for, the sense of worthlessness, all the negativity failures bring along- these are hard to put up with. But then again, we’ve heard and read many stories of success after failures, stories of what patience and perseverance can deliver. So we know the best thing to do during these times is to find inspiration and push through.
5. Divorce
Marriages takes a lot of effort to function well. We’ve witnessed many failed marriages leading up to divorce and heard the stories or even experienced how difficult the transition is for the whole family. Sadly, some of us might have to live through this terrible experience.
While splitting a family is as horrible as it sounds and probably no one really likes the idea of going to divorce lawyers, divorce is the best answer if a marriage is not working. It opens up doors for positive changes in life. Knowing this helps people keep the right attitude towards life after divorce.
6. Losing a Job
Losing a job could be devastating, and you might even go hungry in the worst case scenario. And trust me, there’s no rougher time than when you have to spend days on a hungry stomach.
So, what’s there to do after losing your job? You might feel hopeless at this point but don’t sweat over it anymore. Be strong and make efforts to find another, a better job. Keep calm and carry on.
7. Getting Older
You might have heard the story of Buddha and how he set out on the path of enlightenment; he saw the miseries in man’s life for which he wanted to find a cure. The point is: getting older can certainly be a difficult situation and there’s no cure for it. Gray hair, wrinkles, frail health, and the inability to do things you once did with great ease are some things we adjust to as we age.
Well, it’s no secret that there’s no fountain of youth. We are all going to be old if we live long enough. So, the best thing to do is plan ahead for old age if you don’t want it to be miserable. You see, that is why wise people came up with things like pensions and retirement plans.
8. Getting Injured, Falling Sick
Accidents happen and sickness might find us, no matter how many precautions we take. Though, this should not dissuade us from being cautious and trying to live healthily. Recovering from injuries is one of the hardest times one could experience and potentially learning to live with changes to your body and abilities can be a major adjustment physically and emotionally.
Again, keeping the right attitude towards life is the key to dealing with it. The seemingly long journey of recovery could be made less stressful by engaging in other activities that the ailments don’t prevent. There is usually always something that you can find to do if you’re willing. For example, there have been people with cancer have written great novels from their hospital beds.
9. Losing All That You Have in a Natural Disaster
Natural disasters are one of the worst things that could ever happen to anyone. During these disasters, people can potentially lose the people they are closest to as well as all their possessions, including their home: a truly traumatic life experience.
But like always, we bounce back.
We are resilient enough to come back from the toughest of times and start over anew. The fact that we survived this calamity is reason enough to believe that we are given a second chance. All we can do in the wake of disasters like an earthquake, tsunami or hurricane is to help each other and find hope in this time of despair.
10. Death of a Loved One
Death is the ultimate truth in life. It could come to anyone at any time. The sorrow it casts is always tough to handle. Losing loved ones, having to live life without them is the most awful kind of change one could experience in life.
The grief and loss model has five stages of grief: denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance but it doesn’t necessarily occur in the same way for everyone. Some of us might take a very long time to reach the stage of acceptance.
Death demands grief so grieving is the right thing to do but the best thing we can do to honor the dead is to accept the fact and move on when we are able to do so. To commemorate the importance of this person’s passing we could also plant a tree, perhaps.
Final Thoughts
Life is never easy. We all come across really difficult moments every now and then, it all depends on how we take them.
Having a positive mindset and attitude when facing challenges is essential to our growth and happiness, so try to practice positive thinking and don’t give up on turning obstacles into opportunities.
Featured photo credit: Dollar Gill via unsplash.com
