How Can I Handle Tough Times?

Are you trying to deal with something you can’t control – tough times due to a natural disaster, the plunging economy, or just plain old bad luck?

 It IS possible to bounce back from tough times and go on to create an even better life.  But this requires a  kind of deep inner strength called resilience.

What is resilience? It’s the ability to find hope amid uncertain conditions. Resilient people do not let adversity define them. They transcend pain and grief by perceiving tough times as temporary, and believe better times are coming.

People do seem to differ in their inborn ability to handle life’s stresses, but resilience can also be cultivated. At the heart of resilience is a belief in yourself. It’s possible to strengthen your belief in yourself and to define yourself as capable and competent.

How to Handle Tough Times
One key to developing resilience is to go back in your mind and reinterpret past events. What you  want to do is  to discover the personal strength you built by surviving that event.

Resiliency is the capacity to rise above the challenges of tough times. Resilience is not the ability to escape unharmed. Resilient people have scars to show for their experience.

At the  heart of becoming more resilient is a technique called Reframing. This is a way of shifting focus from the cup half empty to the cup half full. Take the case of one woman who had been emotionally abused by her parents throughout her childhood. Her healing occurred in an instant when she realized what a powerful survivor she was.

Re-examine your life story to see how heroic your acts were as a child. Go back to an incident, identify your resulting survivor’s strengths, and your build self-esteem from this achievement. Build your resilience FAST!