We all struggle. Overcoming adversities is a necessary part of life. Some people choose to be like Albert Camus’ Sisyphus – they find meaning and happiness in their struggle. But sometimes, life can get so tough you can’t even get out of bed to brush your teeth in the morning.
Why is it easier for some people to deal with difficult times than others? The key is to believe in a philosophy that benefits you and takes you towards your goals. It’s impossible to live a life without any struggle, but it’s possible to live a life where you don’t let a negative mindset take over your life because of the struggle.
Here are 21 ways to overcome adversities or misfortune and fight anxiety:
1 – Laugh as much as you can to fight against a negative mindset
Laughing is one of the best ways to overcome adversities in your life. When you laugh, you release tension from your body, and your brain releases endorphins and dopamine. It can be hard to find things to laugh about when you’re going through difficult times, so you have to find your sense of humor. It doesn’t necessarily have to be funny to other people. It’s a good way to strengthen yourself and fight back against a negative mindset.
Finding your sense of humor will make you more confident. There’s probably nothing braver than laughing in the face of adversity.
2 – Prepare for the worst to overcome adversities
Life is full of struggle. You can’t expect to live your life without going through any difficult times. You have to prepare yourself for anything terrible you think might happen to you, and you have to figure out how you’ll react to it. This is a good way to ease your anxiety, too. Take any situation in your life and think about how it could go wrong. How would you react to it?
Mentally preparing yourself will make you more calm and level-headed, and you’ll be able to assess the situation from every angle.
3 – Think about your past experiences
You’ve probably been through some stuff in the past. Think about how you overcame adversities in the past! You probably thought you wouldn’t survive, but you did! You’re still alive, and you’re doing well. You didn’t let a negative mindset destroy your life.
“A soul which has conquered so much misery will be ashamed to worry about one more wound in a body that already has so many scars,” wrote the Greek philosopher Seneca. When life knocks you down, you have to remind yourself that this isn’t the first time you fell on the ground. You got back up before, and you’ll get back up this time, too.
4 – Learn from what you’re going through
Difficult times in life can teach you a lot of valuable lessons. For example, if you’ve been through a painful breakup, you can figure out what went wrong and make sure the same mistakes aren’t repeated in your future relationships.
Adversities give you the chance to learn and improve yourself as a person. Think of them as an opportunity for you to become a better person, change a negative mindset, and understand life better.
5 – Become friends with positive people so you can change your negative mindset
The people you spend time with will influence your thoughts, behaviors, and attitudes, so you need to make sure you’re with the right crowd. When you’re going through difficult times, you should surround yourself with positive people who will encourage you and motivate you to be resilient and overcome adversities. Be with people who make an effort to understand and accept you. Having people around you who’ll support you can help a lot when you’re going through difficult times.
6 – Spend some quality “me time”
When you’re going through difficult times and finding it hard to overcome adversities in life, it’s only natural to feel down and have self-esteem problems. It’s important not to neglect your physical and mental health when you’re going through something. The adversities you face in your life will make you question your beliefs and ideas. You have to remind yourself that you’ll come out stronger from whatever it is you’re going through.
Read some self-help books. Happiness might be an elusive concept, but there are ways to improve yourself, and there are plenty of self-help books out there that will teach you how to change your negative mindset and thought patterns. Reading is also a great way to spend quality time.
7 – Spend some time in nature
Nature isn’t a replacement for medication, and if you think you suffer from depression or anxiety, you should talk to a therapist. With that being said, being in nature is a great way to improve your mood. When we go through difficult times, we tend to shut ourselves in our rooms, and we stop socializing with people.
Spending some time connecting with nature will allow us to be in a different environment. It’ll serve as a distraction from your troubles and worries, and you might even be rewarded with a new perspective if you spend enough time outside. There’s a lot we can learn from being outside in nature. Not to mention the fact that just being in the presence of trees, plants, and the sun can have a calming effect on our mood.
8 – Start writing when going experiencing difficult times
Going through adversities can cause you to overthink and have frequent negative thoughts. To cope with that, you should start writing! When you overthink, you lose clarity of your thoughts. You juggle with multiple ideas without having any clear understanding of any one of them. This can make it hard to change your negative mindset.
Writing can help you get some clarity, and it’s also a great way to express your emotions and feelings, which you might not be able to express with words.
9 – Accept your situation to overcome adversities
When you’re going through a challenging situation, your first reaction is probably to feel down and sad. You become tired, and you lose all motivation and energy to do even the most basic tasks. All you can do is think about how you’ll never get overcome adversities in your life. And even when the situation has passed, you still spend most of your time thinking about it and how sad it made you.
The very first step to recovery is acknowledging the situation. Accept what happened. Accept that there’s nothing you can do about it now. Accept the mistakes you made so you don’t repeat them. You have to learn to make peace with your situation. Once you acknowledge it, you can then figure out what you can do to overcome it.
10 – Don’t give up
You have to constantly remind yourself that you’re strong and you’re not going to give up in your struggle of overcoming adversities. When you accept the problem and move on to the stage where you look for solutions, you have to commit to it. If one solution doesn’t work, try another. This will make you stronger as a person, and you’ll change your negative mindset to one that will encourage you not to give up. Your situation will push you to be more creative and resilient, no matter how bad life gets.
11 – Accept your limitations
Sometimes, you have no choice but to accept your limitations. This doesn’t mean that you’re giving up. You’re just acknowledging that there’s nothing you can do to fix the situation and the only solution is to accept that there’s nothing you can do. It’s not something everyone can do. Many people tend to become disheartened when they realize they can’t do anything to fix the problem, but let’s be honest, you can’t solve everything. Accepting your limitations reminds you that you’re human. We all make mistakes. And sometimes, the only way to fix them is to leave them unfixed.
12 – Remind yourself that not everything is under your control
Sometimes you accidentally break a glass you like a lot. What do you do to fix that? You go out and buy a new glass because that’s something you can do. Now, suppose you didn’t get a job because some other candidate was more suited for it than you got accepted. What do you do in a situation like that? You can’t barge into the office and demand that they hire you, can you?
Some situations aren’t under your control, and you can’t do anything about them; other than focus on your reaction to them. If you didn’t get the job because some other candidate performed better on the interview, well then, it’s time for you to start polishing up your interviewing skills! You have to try and change your negative mindset and think positively about the situation. Instead of thinking you didn’t get the job, think about what you learned during and after the interview process. Think about how you can apply to other better jobs now!
13 – Find a purpose to overcome adversities
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “He, who has a why to live for, can bear with almost anyhow.”
Finding a purpose in your life can help you become determined and resilient. Once you realize that you have something you want to achieve in your life, you’ll become committed to getting it. Make a list of things you’re passionate about, and then figure out which ones are the most important to you. Make it a goal to get better at those things. Once you have a clear understanding of your goals, you’ll feel more motivated, and you’ll do anything to achieve them.
14 – Stay positive when going through difficult times
Too much positivity can be impractical and useless. But if you can figure out how to balance positivity and negativity, you’ll be well on your way to success. Adversities can cause you to have a negative mindset, and they can make you feel as if nothing good can happen in your life. But you have to remind yourself that it’s very easy for your mind to be influenced by your surroundings. You have to stick with thoughts that benefit you. Are negative thoughts benefiting you? Of course not! They’re only going to make your life worse. Having positive thoughts will help you cope with your situation, and they’ll also make it easier for you to deal with difficult times. In these sort of situations, having a supportive friend can help a lot!
15 – Believe in yourself
Having self-confidence and trust in your abilities can go a long way in overcoming adversities life throws at you. Successful people became successful because they believed in their capabilities and abilities. Learn to be more open-minded. Sometimes it’s important to take a step back and look at yourself and your abilities from a detached lens. Analyze your capabilities without any bias and figure out what needs improvement.
16 – Practice self-compassion
A lot of us go through adversities and misfortunes at a sudden point in life. It is okay to have a difficult time; you can learn to lift yourself. Please show yourself some kindness and compassion. Please! Please! Do not be hard on yourself. If you keep criticizing and blaming yourself for every bad time, then you will never be able to move forward. It is important to be self-compassionate and practice it.
Self-compassion practice focuses on kindness, humanity, and mindfulness techniques. It enhances your mental health positively to overcome adversities or misfortune and brings life satisfaction.
17 – Make a list of things that used to make you happy
When you’re going through difficult times, nothing tends to make you happy because you forget everything that brought a smile on your face when your life wasn’t as turbulent. When this happens, it’s important to remind yourself what things brought joy into your life.
You can make a list of things that used to make you happy. Do any of these things still bring you comfort? It’s okay if they don’t. Make sure the list is as long as possible. Anything that brought even the tiniest amount of joy into your life writes it down. Once you’ve done that, make another list where you write about why these things made you happy. A negative mindset and difficult times can often make you forget the reasons you found joy in certain things, but when you write them down, you might be able to enjoy them again.
18 – Focus on the good
Going through difficult times can make you lose sight of all the good things in your life. You end up focusing only on the negative side of life. When that happens, it’s important to remember that your life isn’t completely devoid of all the positive things; your brain is just focusing on the negativity because you’ve developed a negative mindset. Sometimes you have to force yourself to think positively, and you might feel like you’re faking it, but that’s okay! Desperate times call for desperate measures. As long as you can remind yourself that there are positive things in your life, it doesn’t matter if you fake it. Remember, you have to find a mindset that positively benefits you.
19 – Read the biographies of successful people
Knowing how other people overcame adversities in their lives can give you a new perspective. You might learn things from their books you hadn’t even thought about. And sometimes, it’s highly motivating to remind ourselves that all these successful people today were once nobodies who had the same struggles as us. Take notes while you’re reading. If you find anything that resonates with you, write your thoughts on it and see how you can apply it in your life.
20 – Keep trying!
Let’s say you tried to launch a business, but it failed. What do you do after that? Do you give up? No! You get back up, and you figure out what went wrong. When you establish a goal in your life, you commit to achieving it. It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. You learn something from your failure, and you make sure you don’t make the same mistakes the next time you do whatever it is you want to do.
You endure whatever life throws at you, and you keep going.
21 – Psychotherapy
If you think you’re going through something that’s causing you to feel depressed or worsening your anxiety symptoms, then you must talk to a therapist about it. Being headstrong and determined is essential, but if it’s taking a toll on your mental health, then the first thing you should be doing is seeing a therapist. Sometimes no matter how positive you try to be, you can’t move forward because your anxiety or depression won’t let you. A therapist will try to change your negative mindset and thought patterns, and they’ll always be there to support you through your struggle.
Summary
Going through difficult times and adversities can break your spirit regardless of how strong you think you are. Everyone struggles in life. Sometimes we have control over the situation; sometimes we don’t. You can either overcome your struggle by surrounding yourself with positive people and changing your negative mindset, or you can talk to a therapist if you think you’re not getting better.
Moving forward with Psychotherapy
Fortunately, Ahealo.com offers a global ePsychotherapy platform that allows clients to book an online anonymous private appointment with a broad skill range of psychotherapists at an affordable cost and desired schedule.
Alternatively, if you need to seek psychotherapy, be sure to check out web.ahealo.com. Ahealo is an online psychotherapy platform with a diverse range of psychotherapists for many different fields of mental challenges. Ahealo provides ePsychotherapy at an affordable price, confidential, convenient (through a web page 1-1 private video call), and at your comfortable schedule.
With these options, we believe your issue of dealing with adversities or misfortune can be resolved soon.
Take care and stay well.
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