We read about techniques and ways to face adversity. To embrace challenge. We’re told failure isn’t in fact failure but learning events so we teach our mind to face it on a positive or at least more condescending way, no blame and no giving up. And all that works fine and don’t get me wrong it isn’t BS or at least most of the approach is positive or leads to a better position to move on, with the head high.
But despite all, who never went through moments of big doubt and put those beliefs in question? When things got so bad or seem so bad? very often we attach ourselves and our projections to expected outcomes and if things don’t turn out that way we expected we don’t look at other possible angles but rather look how wrong we were.
Remember the old saying, “We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are”.
When it gets tough, fear will take over (often in our mind or in the way we look at a certain situation) if you don’t have enough reasons: Positive (If I do this, I’ll achieve that) or Negative (If I don’t do this, I won’t have that or I will lose something valuable to me).
Reasons come first, answers come later. Stop trying to get answers for everything right at hand. Gather tools, gather “ammunition” to go through challenges. Not with answers or with a mind ready to answer but with valid reasons on why you’re doing what you’re into.
You live life on its terms, not on your terms. Surely you can plan, prepare, have objectives. But those are just few pieces of the puzzle, there are many more missing and those are not in your hands (they’re eventually in your mind). Challenges and the need to embrace them will always be there, as life isn’t a straight line from A to Z.
Progress and celebrating it. That’s what you need to keep the enthusiasm and motivation. Willing to keep moving forward. Small steps, celebrating small wins and being grateful along the way. Not just with the big end goal in mind. Segregate your objective in small parts.
Vision or objectives aren’t a wish list. They must be compelling, exciting, and you need to define a route to get there knowing you’ll need to face doubts, chose between crossroads, persevere or adjust. That’s all part of the game as life is a lively puzzle, not a static one.
Knowledge isn’t power, it’s how you use your knowledge that eventually can turn things at your favor. Take an interview for a job as example. A guy with an MBA gets rejected another one without it gets the job. What made the difference? How they used their knowledge to answer the questions. Not the diploma itself. One candidate providing insights and vision, another one often reporting to the MBA as his flagship and proof of achievment.
Resolution = Resolve/Solution. Not a hope. Very often we think we got it, we have a solution or what seems to be the way ahead. We need to stay committed and act. We need not only to find ways to solve issues but most of all to put them into practice.
The difficulty in when you’re going through hard times is to control your emotional state and have clarity of what’s around you. Following a process, from 1 to 10 steps seems quite simple when you’re reading from the distance. Who will grab a process when s* hits the fan? The best is to learn/embed techniques as the ones above to control your thoughts and emotions and be better equipped in advance.