Learning how to handle difficult times is easier said than done. There are certainly situations that we can face that create so much stress in our life that it disrupts our normal flow of life. In fact, we can go down that slippery slope to depression if we aren’t careful.
As I write this, it’s winter and it’s dark outside. We have clouds that have been covering the Sun, and it seems like it’s been that way for weeks. Sometimes it’s raining constantly, and it just looks so dreary every. Single. Day!
It’s normal not to feel very motivated in your life in the winter months. Frankly, some people are dealing with sadness and depression because of the dark skies.
Winter blues aren’t really what we’re talking about here, it’s only a metaphor for dealing with something far bigger: Our darkest times.
The fact of the matter is, we’ve dealt with some very difficult stressful times in our life. We may even refer to past ones as a “bad year” or our “dark times”.
Though you may not expect it, there is a greater danger in giving these days such a strong meaning. We’ll talk more about this below.
Some of us have lived a charmed life and a difficult, challenging time could really reach them deeply inside and bring them to their knees.
Some of us have lived a very difficult life with fleeting moments of joy, and we’ve learned to cope much easier than most. When you face many different kinds of stress – and often – you can’t help but learn a thing or two about coping.
I can speak to this from my own personal experience because I have had many difficult times in my life starting with destitution as a youth and being homeless when I was just 13 years old, most recently it was a divorce of a very long marriage.
While I’m no special snowflake in this world where we have so many divorces these days, it was something that touched me deeply. It was a very difficult, dark time in my life. As someone who’d always envisioned that my marriage would be bulletproof and that it would last forever, it was crushing.
So how did I come out of it?
When we have situations like this, they mimic other tragic events such as death. We go through a tremendous amount of emotions. A divorce is in a sense a death and that’s the way I felt for a long time but through my training, I realized that there were some coping mechanisms that I could integrate into my life to help me deal with this difficult time.
One of which was changing my physical state.
You could be laughing right now as you read that thinking, “there’s no way that will help!” Actually, there are studies that prove it really does!
That’s not something that’s very easy to do especially in times like this when it’s winter and it’s dark outside we don’t feel like moving our bodies. We’re sad, and we’re depressed! We need to be very careful about this state of mind because we as human seek homeostasis. This simply means that we fall into patterns very easily and become addicted to these patterns.
When we are dealing with depression, sadness or lack of motivation, we have to be very careful not to fall into it. It’s one of those situations where we have to “just do it”!
Get to the gym! You won’t regret it! Move your body! Simply go for a walk. Get out to the mall. You need to do some thing to move your body so that you can change your physical state.
Music is another very healing thing that we can do in our life especially when we’re dealing with difficult times.
That’s what I had to do. You need to trust. Simply trust in this process. I get that you may not believe it or even want to get out or exercise but trust me, I’m your coach and I knowthis works!
Something that is very helpful is giving a situation a different meaning. For my own situation, which was the divorce, I had to look at it a different way… As challenging as that was.
One of the reasons I chose to get divorced in the first place was so that I could live a future with someone who truly loved me. I was trapped in a cold marriage and wanted so much more.
I realized that I diddeserve to be loved. We forget that as we spend so long settling for being insignificant. I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to settle for that, or anything else you didn’t ask for. You don’t have to live an insignificant existence anymore. Ask for more in your life!
When we’re dealing with the lawyers and the complications because there are children and so forth, realize that there is something in the future that is better for you.
When one door closes, another one opens.
Dealing with even darker difficulties such as death is probably one of the worst things I can possibly imagine. I am fortunate that I have never had to deal with that and it’s a difficult subject.
What we want to do is to see what we have. We want to see the people around us that are supporting us. We want to love what we do have so when we’re dealing with death for example, we want to see our own death in the future.
Realize that we can truly live by looking at our own death. It’s a lesson that helps us to learn what it is that we need to do to change our own life.
To live as if every day was the last day on the planet. To know what our purpose is, and to truly love openly and freely. We can love the people that are around us. We can look at things that are working for us.
I never want to diminish the pain of death, or simplify how to cope with it. Especially when it’s someone close to us, because it is one of the saddest things that we can experience. Still, we need to celebrate the time that we spent with the person we lost. Better yet, we learn from this loss to embrace others still with us.
The biggest part of learning how to handle difficult times is learning to give things a newer, more abundant meaning.
Think of difficult situations with other people as if they’re your emotional personal trainer. We know that a personal trainer will push you, right? What we want to do is think of people as pushing us to be our better selves.
Realize that, if we didn’t have that, there wouldn’t be limitations for us to push beyond. We’d never have the chance to see our true strength if there were nothing to overcome!
We can be grateful for some of the stress that we feel. Despite the pain that it gives us, there is potential for incredible personal growth to come from it.
While you’re still in your darkness, the light at the end of the tunnel can be hard to see. Trust in the process, and trust in knowing that this is just a phase. Know that, as you go through the emotions, you’ll come out of it a better person.
