Contributed post
Pixabay CC0 License
It’s a simple fact of life that stressful circumstances inevitably arise from time to time, that hurdles and personal setbacks occur, and that it can be difficult to remain positive on a consistent basis.
Of course, your personal well-being is always going to be greater if you’re able to maintain a generally positive outlook on things, and the hurdles and obstacles that you do end up facing in life will tend to be much more manageable as well, if you can avoid giving in to negativity.
Sometimes, in order to regain a sense of positivity, it’s simply necessary to remember a few fundamental facts that can help to bring everything back into proper perspective.
Here are a few reminders to help you stay positive.
Many unpleasant situations are fleeting and treatable
There are a lot of unpleasant situations that can arise in everyday life which are nonetheless fleeting and treatable – things which don’t have to be endured for the long term, and which can be handled without too much trouble.
Of course, the problems themselves can still feel overwhelming and unfair when they are occurring, but simply reminding yourself that “this can be handled, and it will get better” can often work wonders with regards to helping you to regain a healthy and balanced sense of perspective.
If your child is experiencing a condition such as baby cradle cap, for example, it’s natural that you would be worried, upset, and stressed. But the solution can nonetheless be as straightforward as a temporary dermatological treatment.
The challenges you face in life can serve to make you spiritually and mentally stronger, if you approach them in the right way
In many of the world’s religions, and in many ancient philosophies, you can find the idea that the challenges, setbacks, and hardships we experience in everyday life can serve to make us spiritually and mentally stronger.
In the case of the ancient Stoic philosopher Epictetus, for example, he explicitly argues that our hardships are sent by the gods precisely in order to make us strong, and he uses the metaphor of these hardships being a “strong sparring partner.”
Of course, in order for the challenges you face to make you spiritually and mentally stronger, you need to approach them with that mindset. You need, in other words, to be willing to engage with the challenge and commit that you will do what you can to be a better and stronger person on the other side of it.
Of course, this is easier said than done – you are certainly much more likely to feel generally positive if you approach things in this way, than if you sit around and tell yourself that you’re being cursed.
There are always possibilities to open doors you haven’t yet opened, and to become things you haven’t yet become
As time goes by over the course of our lives, and we get into habitual behaviour patterns, we can often end up feeling “solidified,” “trapped,” and maybe even “petrified.”
In other words, it can feel as though we have expended all of our possibilities, and that there are no more doors that can yet be opened in order for us to rejuvenate or reinvent ourselves.
The truth is that there are always possibilities to open new doors you haven’t yet opened, and to become things that you haven’t yet become, as long as you live. The world is enormous, and it's full of a myriad of different avenues. We are all faced by a huge number of choices in everyday life – and a huge number of different directions we can go in.
It’s worth reminding yourself that there are always more things you can do – many that you almost certainly haven’t even thought of yet.
Many of the things that get us down or disturb us in day-to-day life simply won’t matter down the line, in the big picture
One great mental exercise to perform in order to stop “sweating the small stuff,” is to imagine how you will feel about a particular situation or issue several decades from now – or even on your deathbed.
Generally speaking, you will find that many of your petty everyday concerns and insecurities will seem absolutely meaningless further down the line, in the big picture sense.
Remembering this can then motivate you to keep moving forward in a spirit of enthusiasm, and to not get bogged down in worrying about the minutiae.
