When it comes to problems, most people see them as an obstacle in life. Instead of taking them in stride, they get overwhelmed and make something good out of them. The problems you face in life aren’t the problems themselves but how people deal with them. Contrary to popular belief, issues don’t make you weaker. They don’t bring you down if you don’t let them. It’s all about how you decide to act after facing a problem.
You can be a perfect person, and still, you will have to face hardships. You can go to the best schools, get the ideal job, and have a great group of friends. Still, life is unpredictable, and you can’t control everything. It’s not up to you whether the firm you work at downsized and you must be let go. Nor is it up to you whether your partner needs something else from a relationship. Whether you or a loved one gets sick is not up to you.
But it’s up to you to pull yourself together and learn from whatever life throws at you. Everyone has problems, most from their socio-economic context or other externalities. Some people are born poor. Others are born with certain illnesses. Even people with a seemingly perfect life have to go through some stuff. But everything in life can be a learning experience and make you stronger. You have to learn how to use your problems to your advantage.
What Does It Mean to Be a Strong Person?
At first thought, you might think that a strong person never shows any sign of weakness. Someone who is never hurt by anything. But that’s not the case. Usually, if someone doesn’t seem hurt by anything, they haven’t faced any major issues yet. No matter how desirable that might seem, it isn’t.
Not experiencing any issues means that you are vulnerable and immature. You’re just shielded from the world, and when an issue finally hits you, it’ll hit you hard. What’s genuinely desirable is to be someone who has faced life to its fullest and has gained life experience. Moreover, people don’t understand what true mental strength means. They often confuse it with toughness. But strength comes from the inside, whereas toughness is all about external appearances.
Tough people act like they’ve got their life together. They will act cold and unbothered. They are usually a bit arrogant and immature. However, mental strength is generally expressed with behaviors that people stereotypically associate with weakness. First and foremost, kindness is the most vital behavior a person could enact. Often, society looks at kind people and thinks of them as weak and vulnerable. But it takes a great deal of courage to be kind to others.
Being genuinely kind means taking the risk of giving without ever receiving anything. They are the people who are genuinely able to be empathetic. But that empathy only comes from having lived through hardships. If you’ve never experienced pain, you won’t fully relate to what others are going through. Furthermore, strength is about adapting to any situation and changing your mindset. That means seeing every silver lining in every case you go through.
Kindness Does Not Mean a Lack of Strength
Strength is about acknowledging your weaknesses and admitting you can never stop growing. Not only that, but being able to ask for help is the best thing you can do. It shows that you aren’t scared to admit that you are vulnerable. You would rather risk being turned away than trying to solve everything alone. When you reach out to others, it’s a high-risk, high reward situation. And only the most vital people have the strength to risk everything when they’re already dealing with issues.
Lastly, strength comes from accepting failure and acknowledging that it’s the only way to reach true growth. If you never fail, you never have an incentive to change. You stay complacent and accept your fate. But when you accept that failure is inevitable, you work pre-emptively to soften the blow. Even though you can never entirely avoid it, you prepare yourself for the worst while working on being the best. Plus, it would help if you learned how to stay calm and have a positive mindset no matter what. Strong people don’t get angry for no reason. They take a step back and work proactively towards a solution.
How Facing Problems Makes You Stronger
Problems are a natural part of life. Here are the ways you might benefit from problem-solving.
1. Problem Solving Teaches You How to Be Empathetic
Empathy is an emotion that can’t be genuine without some lived experiences backing it up. Sure, some people are naturally more empathetic. But that’s just because they are more inclined to listen and try to understand what others feel. But genuine empathy comes from knowing how the people around you think, not just guessing. And that can only happen if you’ve lived through problems.
Someone who has never had a problem won’t know how that pain feels. If you’ve never had to go to bed hungry, you won’t be able to relate fully. You won’t understand what that pain truly means if you’ve never gone through heartbreak. That’s not to say you have to starve yourself to try and understand other perspectives. You can still have some level of empathy if your life has been easy.
But, when you’ve been hurt, not only will you logically understand their perspective. You’ll feel how they feel. Not only that, but having problems makes you more curious and open to listening to others. Because you know how hard life can be, you feel like you don’t want that to happen to anyone else. So, you make a conscious effort to listen and help others. This makes you a kinder, stronger person.
2. It Helps You Have a Plan
Having a life plan and a daily routine is one of the best ways to deal with your problems. When you prepare for any possibility, you will be better equipped to handle them correctly. You have to prepare yourself for the worst so that when problems arise, you can solve them. Instead of being shocked by that issue and taking the full blow, you can soften it.
That way, you won’t be stuck handling the total weight of the issue. You will get over it sooner, leaving more time to look for the silver lining. The emotional blowback of hardship is very hard to deal with if you don’t have a structure in your life. But when you have some order, you can pick yourself up sooner. You will follow a strict framework to keep your life together.
In the meantime, you can sort your other issues out. A daily routine will give you some strict rules to follow and help you predict how your days will unfold. If you follow that plan, you don’t have to put any effort into planning on the spot. This is a safety net in case something terrible happens. If something unpredictable comes up, you will have the time and resources to focus on that one issue. This will generally help you be stronger both emotionally and mentally speaking.
3. Your Problems Guide You Towards a Positive Mindset
Having a positive mindset often goes hand in hand with facing problems. And the more problems you face, the more positive you can become. But it would help if you consciously tried to take everything in stride. There are two extremes when it comes to facing problems. You either allow yourself to be torn down by them or learn to grow. The second option is more desirable but easier if you know how to do it.
It’s not that hard to learn to stay positive even in the darkest of times. This might seem like a reductive stance, but taken in context, it isn’t. Some issues aren’t that light. It’s hard to see the positives when it comes to being poor or dealing with an illness. But the alternative to staying positive is sinking into a dark mentality.
Being pessimistic will only make you give up. It will make it seem like there’s nothing left to fight for anymore. You need to stay positive and cling to every little glimmer of hope you can. If you are struggling with your job, remember that you can still succeed as long as you are healthy. If you are dealing with health issues, remember that your family and friends are still around you.
Not only that but going through problems helps you become more positive. When you see how much worse things can get, your mentality shifts. You start appreciating every little thing and finding joy even in the darkest of times. You keep that hope which keeps you going even when everything seems lost. This not only makes you mentally stronger but helps you pragmatically.
You won’t let every little thing bring you down anymore. You will keep persevering and doing things that benefit you, no matter how hard it seems.
Final Thoughts on How Facing Problems Makes You Stronger
People are so afraid of dealing with problems that they don’t realize issues make you stronger. Hardships are inevitable in life. No matter how hard you try, you can’t avoid all of them. The key to dealing with them is not running away from them. The key is learning how to use those hardships to your advantage. What most people don’t understand is that problems make you stronger.
Facing problems helps you grow up. It gives you an accurate comparison of your life and how bad it can potentially get. When you hit your lowest point, you realize how much you have. You start to understand what others go through and how essential being kind is. You begin to value having stability and planning your life. And most importantly, you learn to stay positive even when everything seems dark. As long as you search for the silver lining, facing issues will only strengthen you.
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