“In fact, it may be necessary to encounter defeats,
so you can know who you are,
what you can rise from,
how you can still come out of it.”
Maya Angelou
This quote from May Angelou describes how life can take nasty turns, and can sometimes dive into darkness, but can, at the same time, also serve as a teacher. Life can give us the opportunity to grow. And I intentionally use the verb ‘can’ because I don’t always agree with the saying:” What doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger.” There are in fact, situations, where people may not be killed by circumstances, but are completely broken though. Not everyone comes out of hard times a stronger person. This elaboration just as an explanation for my choice of words.
Let’s come back to the quote of Maya Angelou.
It is true that, when we sail through life, without hitting hard times, without serious setbacks, we do not really know who we are and what we’re capable of. We may think we will be able to find the strength to get back up after being knocked down, but we aren’t really sure until we live it. Or vice versa, we might think we would never be able to recover from a tragedy, and still come out a stronger, wiser and more compassionate person after we’ve been through one.
That is why I believe it is important, to already have the tools to deal with hardship, to already learn coping techniques, so that we will be able to face, and recover from, rough patches on our path.
Being aware of the fact that life will throw us a curveball, we just do not know when,
knowing that grief and pain are a natural part of life,
being willing to face hardship when it comes our way, and consciously choosing our reaction in every situation,
are essentials to take the first steps into the coping process.
Whenever we encounter seriously painful situations, it is important to realize, and accept, the fact that you have to go through the process, that you have to live through your emotions.
You don’t get over your emotions,
you have to live through them.
That is the only healthy way to recover.
Staying in denial, compensating your emotions with any kind of ‘short-term-satisfaction’, or numbing, behavior, will only result in illness, in getting stuck, in more pain. Even physical pain or illness can be, and mostly is, a result of emotions that remain undealt with.
My invitation to you all this week is:
Accept that hard times will come.
Prepare for it by learning about coping mechanisms.
Prepare yourself by learning how to become still in the midst of chaos.
Learn how breathing exercises can calm down your nervus system.
Know that you can detach yourself from telling the story over and over again. And this detachment will bring you to the next level of dealing with it. You’ll see more clearly, and you’ll realize you have options.
Once you know you are equipped to face hard times, you will have more faith in your abilities to recover, once those painful situations do occur.
Developing these mechanisms will make you more equipped to face all parts of life.
You will feel stronger and more at ease, even though you know you will get knocked down from time to time.
You now are more confident that, when it happens, you will be able to fall back on what you’ve learned, on what you’ve trained yourself to do.
Every time you have gotten back up again, you will have strengthened your belief in yourself, in your ability to choose how you will face, and react to, difficult times.
The older we get, the more we will have had opportunities to grow, to learn how to get back up again.
Pain, grief, … is not something we look forward to, but it happens, and when we can see it as an opportunity to learn, we’ll cope better.
As hardship is inevitable, the best thing we can do, is to use these difficult situations, to become wiser, to become better able to live through our emotions.
That’s when you’ll know:
who you really are,
what you’re capable of,
how to deal with setbacks.
It makes you realize you always have a choice in how you deal with life. And when you choose to prepare, to become a mindful person now, to already train yourself in dealing with emotions, big and small, … you are giving yourself a head start, for when the really hard stuff happens.
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Katrien