By Jennifer R. Farmer
What do you do when you face hard times? How do you keep pursuing your goals when there’s so much pushing back on you and encouraging you to give up?
I believe the key to navigating tough times includes faith, determination and a willingness to reach out and ask for help. Faith creates a center, outside of ourselves, that we can tap into and draw hope. Faith is not only believing that things will get better; it is also cultivating a spiritual practice that enables us to put our hope in someone bigger than ourselves. When I face tough times, it helps that I believe that there is a God who is looking out for me, indeed concerned with the details of my life. Deepening my faith includes praying, reading the Bible, connecting with people who are similarly aligned and bathing myself in the promises that God has made to me.
In addition to faith, I believe that we can also navigate tough times by reaching out for help. No one walks alone, and no one can get through life alone. But so many times, when we experience hard times, we are reluctant to ask for help. That could come from pride or trauma. Pride says, “I don’t want anyone to know that I’m struggling.” Trauma could look like being penalized and judged for asking for help in the past and therefore vowing not to ask for help again. Neither pride nor trauma responses can help move through tough times. We must be willing to reach out and ask for help. We may hear “no,” and we may brush up against other people’s limitations, but that shouldn’t dissuade us from reaching out.
The other thing we must do to overcome tough times is to be determined to survive, indeed thrive. Determine that come hell or high waters, you will make it. You do not need to initially know how; you simply must cultivate the determination to come out on the other side. Set the intention: “I will get through this.”
I’ll be the first to admit that we must develop this type of determination. We must distance ourselves from negativity – our negative thoughts and the negative thoughts of others.
Finally, we can move through tough times by gaining proper perspective. Proper perspective looks like understanding that there are seasons in life. In some seasons, we face certain challenges that limit our capacity or cause us to question ourselves. In other seasons, we enjoy moments of ease. A proper perspective recognizes that your season has nothing to do with your worth as a person. It is fleeting.
This Is Life
The thing about life we must remember is that problems are guaranteed. No one gets through this life unscathed. What is more – prior hard times are not inoculation from future pain. We may face trial after trial, and in between there will be moments of joy and peace. Difficult as it is, we cannot become undone by the existence of pain. We must process and grieve even as we determine to move through it.
The extent to which we can tap into something higher than ourselves, cultivate determination and ask for help is the extent to which we can navigate and survive life’s challenges. Believe this. Know this.