Getting through hard times is something every one of us eventually faces.
Everyone wants to experience success, health, good fortune, and a fun and interesting life all the time, where everything unfolds exactly as we’d like it to, but life doesn’t happen that way. And we’re fortunate that it doesn’t. Each life will have a mixture of fortune and misfortune, pleasant and unpleasant experiences, successes and failures, and each of these has its own value and role in our lives.
You probably already know the value of using your thoughts, beliefs, and intentions to create a successful and happy life. But do you know how to gain benefit from misfortune, to have it be a positive force in your life?
Why Hard Times Happen to Everyone
Hard times can come in many different ways. It may be a serious illness, the loss of a job, a failure in a project you’ve worked long and hard at, a marriage breakup, a financial bankruptcy where you are obliged to start over, a family crisis.
Whatever form it takes, it will be unpleasant and perhaps shake you to your core, making you doubt everything, and this is good.
It is from this doubt and despair that something new can birth itself, and with this birth you have the opportunity to gain something very valuable from your misfortune.
What Misfortune Teaches Us About Change
Each negative circumstance of our life carries with it wisdom and opportunities, no matter how horrific the misfortune may seem at the time. The one thing you can be sure of is that misfortune always demands a change. These changes may not always be what we’d planned, but suddenly we’re thrust into unknown waters and swimming for our lives. These changes may not be pleasant, but they almost always lead us to something good.
Movement and change are the way of the universe. We often forget this and crave stability, but the only constant in our lives is change. Often we get too comfortable in our habits; we fall into a rut, as it is probably a comfortable rut. Comfort is the enemy of change.
The Hidden Benefits of Getting Through Hard Times
We never make changes when things are going well. When we are too comfortable in our routines, we stagnate.
Hard times are a wonderful device for getting us to notice where we are being complacent or out of alignment. Misfortune forces us to reassess what is important to us and what is not. It lets us shift our perspective, as we are forced to shift our perspective to come to grips with the reality that now faces us.
Getting through hard times also deepens us. When we feel our own vulnerability, we can feel others too. We see the human condition differently and develop compassion and understanding. This not only deepens us; it also enriches us.
There is a strange and wondrous spaciousness that happens when misfortune comes our way, a spaciousness that allows us to see and feel the richness of simple everyday things like the buds on a spring maple, or a sunset, or the sound of children playing. In these moments we realize how rich and full our lives are, even with this misfortune.
Making Hard Times Work For You
Misfortune carries with it benefits that are not always obvious.
If you are going through hard times right now, embrace it while it is here, for it too will pass and change into something else. But before it passes, make sure to extract all the benefits that it is giving you. If you do, it will be a catalyst to a deeper, richer, fuller, and happier life.
Getting through hard times is ultimately about learning to work with your mind instead of against it. It’s the same principle behind everything we teach in Mind Power. If you’d like to go deeper into how your thoughts and beliefs shape what happens to you, even during life’s hardest seasons, start with the first lesson of the Mind Power course, free.
FAQ
How do you get through hard times?
Start by resisting the urge to only see hard times as something to endure and escape. Misfortune demands change, and while that change is rarely welcome at first, it's often the exact thing needed to break complacency and shift your perspective. Rather than fighting the discomfort, look for what it's asking you to notice, release, or reassess.
What does it mean to go through a hard time?
Going through a hard time means facing a period of loss, failure, illness, or upheaval that shakes your sense of stability and forces you to confront what you'd normally avoid. While painful, these seasons carry their own value. They're often the catalyst for the deepest personal growth, compassion, and clarity in a person's life.
How can you be happy when life is hard?
Happiness during hard times rarely comes from ignoring the difficulty. It comes from noticing what the difficulty reveals. Vulnerability often deepens our capacity for compassion, and hard seasons have a way of making ordinary things, like a sunset, a quiet moment, or a small kindness, feel unexpectedly rich. That shift in perspective is often where happiness quietly returns.
