When Life Hurts: 5 Essential Skills to Overcome Adversities

Lisa Franchi September 26, 2013

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Adversities are part of life. Every day, we face different challenges that make us feel anxious and stressed. At times, we encounter major blows that are heart-breaking, tormenting and severely painful.

Nevertheless, adversities teach us important lessons that we will treasure for the rest of our lives. Every challenge or difficulty we come across with is designed to strengthen our will, enhance our confidence, and boost our ability to conquer future challenges. For example, loss makes us treasure the things we have, failure inspires us to move forward and never stop trying, whilst rejection makes us love others more. As Greek philosopher Herodotus once said, "Adversity has the effect of drawing out strength and qualities of a man that would have lain dormant in its absence."

But to uncover the hidden lesson behind adversities, we want to make sure we would be able to make it through them. Many people don’t seem to understand or realise the message brought by their adversities because they have given up even before they could experience it.

When life seems to hurt, you need to resist them and use those challenges to your advantage. How? You can do so if you will develop the following essential skills.

Self-love

“Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all’ so goes a popular song. Many people are very harsh on themselves, especially during difficult times. Some people respond to disappointments in life by doing things that could harm their health and well-being, such as drug and alcohol abuse. But not a single scientific study has shown that these things could help people overcome adversities. What science tells us is that self-love or compassion gives us protection from pain, whether physical or emotional. When life hurts, you want to give yourself the opportunity to cry if you need to, understand the causes of your emotional pain (rather than hiding or denying it), and choosing healthy yet comforting activities like getting a massage, travelling or taking a holiday, exercising, meditating, and so on.

Optimism

When life hurts, it’s easy to be bombarded by negative thoughts and feelings. But they will do nothing but make things harder for you. You should harness optimism instead. Optimism, or the skill to see the glass half full, gives you greater strength and resilience against adversities. Remember, everything happens for a purpose. Sometimes, challenges guide us to better decisions and paths. When you are in pain, try to look for the positive side of it, no matter how difficult it could be. For example, if your partner has left you for someone else, maybe it’s because you are better off with another person. If you didn’t get the job you applied for, maybe because you deserve a better one, or it is not the career that will make you happy.

Courage and Strength

Before adversity hits, you want to start building your internal resources, such as emotional strength, courage and discipline. These are going to fuel your self-love and optimism, which in turn, help you survive the challenge. How do you do it? First, you want to acknowledge the fact that certain difficulties are inevitable. By being aware of the possibility of difficulties, you are preparing your mind and body. If you prepare for the worst, usually, the worst never happens, or the impact is less than what you anticipated.

Awareness

Resilient people are always aware of the situation they’re in, including their own emotional reactions and behaviours. In order to manage feelings and find solutions to overcome them, you first want to be aware of what specific emotions or thoughts are bothering you at the moment. For example, you didn’t get the job. What’s in it that hurts a lot? Do you feel hurt because your family and friends are expecting that you will make it? Or is it because your ego has been wounded? After pinpointing the real cause of the emotion, it can be easy to formulate the most suitable solution.

Strong Social Connection

When life hurts, getting support from your social circles can greatly help. Just merely talking about the challenges can help you gain perspective, find solutions, or simply express how you feel. Friends, family, co-workers, and online communities can all be a good source of social connection.

Aside from these, another very important skill you want to develop, when dealing with adversities, is to recognise when to ask for help. During a crisis, people can greatly benefit from the help of psychologists, counsellors and other specially trained therapists. These people can give you professional guidance, as well as love, care and support during difficult moments in life.