Getting through tough times

By Bryan Golden

We all have tough times we have to get through. There are many situations you have no control over. However, what you do in response is completely up to you. First of all, don’t get caught up with stress, worry, and fear. They cause anxiety, agitation, and perhaps feelings of depression.
Living with events you can’t change is part of life. Attempting to change things you have no control over causes frustration. Once you recognize something is beyond your control, you can concentrate on making the best of it.
Taking action is more productive than worrying. Although there are many situations you can’t control, you can control your reaction to them. This is the essence of coping. By directing your energy at finding survival strategies, rather than obsessing over your predicament, your attitude will improve. With action and a proactive attitude, you have a lot of leverage to improve your circumstances.
Although predicaments you have no control over can be a hardship, you do have the ability to get through tough times. You’ve endured before and you will again.  Flexibility and creativity are the keys to surviving.
Tough times don’t last, but tough people do. Problems and people are in constant conflict. The way you triumph over problems is to outlast them. Adversity comes and goes. Problems are solved, resolved or fade away. Tough people keep going. They may slip, trip or fall, but they get up, recover their balance and keep moving forward.
Tough times can have a grinding, draining and demoralizing effect on a person.  But allowing a tough problem to beat you into despair puts you in danger of becoming overwhelmed with little hope of recovery. Everyone needs encouragement and motivation. 
Often, it’s when you’re hanging on by your fingernails, and feel that you can’t last much longer, that you’re about to turn the corner and overcome your problems. It’s exactly at the point where you want to give up, and throw in the towel, that you must dig deeper into your inner storehouse of resolve and march on.
Understanding that tough times don’t last gives you the stamina to outlast them.  There has never been a problem that could stand up to the power of imagination and determination. Mental toughness empowers you to find solutions. Tough times force you to develop your strengths and formulate a strategy of thinking, enabling you to find the way around, over, under or through a problem.
Problems are only temporary aberrations on your path of life. Tough times are like a brick wall. When examined up close, both are made up of small pieces that are removable. If you try and break through a brick wall by repeatedly throwing your body against it, you will only become sore and frustrated.
However, if you climb to the top of the wall with a hammer and a chisel, you can readily begin removing one brick at a time. This is the same approach that will allow you to tackle tough times. Each challenge is a collection of bricks that can be removed one at a time. 
You can cause problems to crumble by disassembling them into small pieces. Once your brick wall of problems has been reduced into a pile of rubble, it no longer seems imposing or overwhelming. 
When viewed in this way, every challenge will appear conquerable. You realize that you can overcome any problem. As you begin to proactively disperse adversity, your self-confidence, self-esteem, and mental toughness will flourish. Rather than being apprehensive of tough times, you will become as worried about them as you would be of a housefly. They may be annoying, but they are certainly no match for you and your mind.
You have the ability to be constant and consistent. You have the force of willpower and determination. Tough times will come and go, but you have the power to endure and overcome. You are a tough person who will outlast tough times.

Golden is a self-development expert, syndicated columnist, professor, and author of Dare to Live Without Limits.