Her eyes couldn’t let go of the sympathetic gaze she was giving her weak pale knees. She had sacrificed a lot to save for rent and Greg’s school fees, only to have the cruel hands of thieves rob her of it, a few steps away from the bank.
Greg her son, was only 12. Losing her husband to the cruel hands of death, authored her financial problems. The house Preston; Greg’s dad bought was foreclosed four months after his death. Preston’s siblings were neither of help to her nor Greg; they had greediness tucked in their slaves. Mercy had little to cater for herself and Greg.
There are moments in life when the going gets tough and all you seem to do is to become overly gloomy, pessimistic and sorrowful. Being there is not the problem because it’s in the nature of humans to react to tough moments in such a manner. Just like the widow in the story above, we all face challenges that come in different shades in life, but it’s worth noting that what we do while that tough time lasts, will go a long way to determine how fast that moment flips or die down. Just as I have said above, your reactions (pessimism, sorrow, gloom) to the trials are not the problem. The problem is what you let those reactions produce temporarily or permanently.
When you go through a harsh phase, what you let your reactions to that phase result in, has the power to change your mindset or fate in life.
A person who lets the depression he feels lead him to commit suicide has automatically changed his fate. This and more scenarios are the results of reactions to tough moments, which have an adverse effect. The question here is, how can this be averted so that even in the midst of gloomy and sorrowful reactions, one can still work out his way out, without losing himself?
What To Do When The Going Gets Tough
1. Tough Times Aren’t Permanent
One thing you should always know is; life is in phases. Hence, tough moments are some of its phases. Just because it looks like there is never going to be a flip, doesn’t mean there won’t be one. One of the things that make tough times last more than their required span is what you do differently; the efforts you make to get out of it as soon as you can. When you do something differently, instead of spending that period resenting every about and around you, you will experience a faster turnaround in such a moment.
2. You’ve Been Through Tough Times Before
One thing you should always realize is, you’ve been through tough moments before. In my book, “Ecstasies Through Challenges,” I explicitly discussed the power of self-motivation and how it helps a person conquer tough moments and come out strong. This act of reminding yourself how you’ve been through moments, or similar to this, is a way of motivating yourself to keep hopes high and scale through this moment too. When you learn to do this more often at difficult moments, you will see yourself conquering this, faster too.
3. Others Go Through Tough Times Too.
One thing that really affects people when they go through tough moments is, they feel they are the only ones facing lots of challenges. They feel they are either cursed or predestined to keep going through tough times. Thus they would want to give up on themselves and possibly on life. It’s necessary to know that other people go through ugly phases too. Maybe not exactly as yours but even uglier. Hence, don’t feel overly depressed that it leads you to resent yourself as well as hating on others. This will help you understand and even seek aid from trusted individuals.
4. Be grateful
As humans, one thing we do so perfectly at difficult moments is forgetting the fact that we have a lot to be grateful for. When we pray to God to take us or give us strategies to overcome the ugly situations in our lives, we often just do the asking without being grateful for even being alive and the unseen battles he keeps fighting for us. I love the words of Paul to the Philippians. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (see Philippians 4:6) The power of gratitude can never be overstated.
One easy way to understand the power of gratitude is your attitude to a person who keeps appreciating you for all you do for him. It’s no doubt his act of gratitude will nudge you to do more for him. Hence, when you go through ugly phases, learn to be grateful because gratitude speeds up results.
5. Seize The Opportunity To Learn And Grow
When you learn to see tough moments as opportunities to learn and grow, it gives you an edge to conquer difficulties quicker. And not only that, it makes you exhume, develop and maximize some hidden potential in you. Great men like Myles Munroe, Albert Einstein, Thomas Alva Edison, and the like, discovered and developed their potential at moments when life gave them thorns for a carpet. So even though it’s not an easy task, using tough moments to learn and grow, will serve better than having your pillow soaked every night, while it lasts.
6. Affirm The Right Words
What you tell yourself at those moments counts a lot. Your subconscious mind takes and holds dear everything you tell yourself when you go through bad patches, and effortlessly keeps reminding you even when you want to think otherwise.
When you fail, and you become all sober, then you keep affirming to yourself that you are a failure, you will discover that your mind will keep reminding you how much of a failure you are even when you don’t want to be reminded of that. Hence, learn to affirm positive words to yourself consistently especially when the going gets tough.
Below are some words you can keep affirming to yourself to help you conquer tough moments.
