Life is tough; let’s face it. Sometimes, though, it can get extremely testing for anyone to keep going. Personal troubles, professional troubles, even something like your pet getting ill can make it hard for you to focus on daily life. There is a saying, however, that “when the going gets tough, the tough get going”. It might sound fancy but it holds great meaning too. People who know how to be strong minded during bad times make it big in life more often than not. Fortunately, if you are looking for help to be such a person, there are some great tips to get you started!
7 Things That You Should Do
Be Emotionally Intelligent
Your emotions play a big role in influencing your reactions. Analyze their causes and accept them. It will make you think more clearly and act more rationally. Stopping the flood of negativity in its tracks requires one to know what one is feeling and why one is feeling that. Once you figure them out, the situation you’re in looks much easier to handle.
Evaluate Your Growth
Mentally taxing situations crop up when one’s flaws and inability to cope with a situation are exposed. Tracking your daily progress helps to keep score of your strengths and weaknesses. Modestly being aware of those weaknesses and acknowledging them will provide you with greater stability when one of them is exposed.
Be Efficient with Your Thoughts
Wasting time with unimportant thoughts and generally being unproductive isn’t how to be strong minded. Mentally tough people use their thoughts wisely and spend energy only on what they know will help them reach their goals. Try not to get distracted by things that won’t help you achieve your dreams. This will help you validate the effort you put in to the things you do.
Accept Change
As ironical as it may seem, change is the only constant in life. A large part of being strong minded during tough times is to know that they are inevitable. No situation lasts for long: that applies to both positive ones and negative ones. A good way to look at things is that trouble, just like everything else, is temporary. This mindset would help you to tame the tides of adversity.
Take Responsibility
This is connected to the notion of “accepting” one’s emotions. Taking responsibility would require analysis and result in acceptance, which is often called the first step to therapy. There is no shortcut on how to be strong minded. You must accept your failures and learn from them. This will help you develop as a much stronger human being.
Shut Out Negativity
Now, this might seem vague, but it’s not. Often the reason for mental weakness isn’t you, but your environment: the people you hang around with. If you catch them saying things like “it’s hopeless” or “you should just give up”, cut them out immediately! You don’t need demoralizing elements like those. Stay with those who make you feel inspired about yourself during good times and bad times.
Tough It Out
This is more of the culmination of everything that has been said so far. Persevere and then some more. If things are looking very bleak, remember that it is always the darkest just before dawn. Going through bad periods can teach you a lot about yourself, so tough it out and never stop learning from life!
7 Things That You Should Avoid
Living in the Past
Bad times may often tend to remind you of the good ones that have gone by. Stop that. There is nothing to be found dwelling in the past. Life moves on ahead. So let go of the baggage and start looking forward. It will help you to live a much more satisfying life and let you deal with more adversities with great dexterity.
Feeling Self-Pity
It is absolutely essential to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Feeling hopeless and thinking how fate isn’t treating you well is not going to help change that. What is going to work, though, is realizing that bad things happen. Troubles come and go and there is nothing you can do about that. But what you can do is be calm and rational during such times and not drown in self-pity.
Refusing External Help
It may seem exceedingly tempting to just be alone because you think no one understands what you are feeling. That is the wrong way to go about things. Everyone has faced bad times and so have the people who are offering to help you. Don’t dismiss their help. Everyone needs some external help at some point. You need all the positivity that you can get.
Impatience
Tough times may seem like ages, and indeed they often are. Time flies when you are happy, but not so much when you are not. During such times, being impatient about things is not the right thing to do. You must realize that rushing things isn’t going to help your situation get better fast. So just do things at your own pace and keep achieving small goals every day.
Obsessing over the Risk of Failure
People who know how to be strong minded know that it is fruitless trying to wrack your brains about the possibility of failure. That would just prevent you from giving your best which might have ensured success. Instead of spending time worrying about the worst that could happen, calculate the situation and do what you deem necessary.
Give In to Your Fears
Everyone has things they are scared of. But a wise man once said that courage isn’t the absence of fear, it is the will to overcome it. In any case, you are afraid for a reason. It is that success means so much more to you. Harness that underlying will to succeed instead of feeling scared and giving in.
Quitting
Never, ever quit. It is not worth it in the end. Quitting leaves too much to be regretted. It is humanity’s greatest flaw that we quit so easily. If what you are doing is important to you, never throw in the towel.
View All Comments /Add Comment