In last week’s post, I talked about how I build hope during difficult times. In summary, I try to do three things:
- Put effort into finding hope
- Spend time with hopeful people
- Embrace uncertainty
In today’s post, I want to explore point #1 – putting effort into finding hope.
Life is Full of Suffering
It’s impossible to go through life without adversity, challenges, and suffering. The Buddha best captured this reality over 2,500 years ago in his teachings of the Four Truths. Essentially, after years of traveling the world in search of a deeper understanding of life, Siddhartha Gautama Buddha came back to his community to share his main insights arrived at through quiet reflection and meditation.
His teachings can be summarized in this one phrase: life is full of suffering. No matter what you do or how you live, you will experience suffering because of something that will happen to you, and your suffering will, in some way, be the cause of suffering to someone else.
Suffering Doesn’t Mean Unhappiness
But just because life has suffering doesn’t mean that one must be unhappy in life. Rather, it is through suffering that a person can learn to find deeper meaning and personal growth.
Viktor Frankl, an Austrian-born psychiatrist who remarkably survived the Holocaust, lost his father, mother, and wife in different concentration camps when the Nazis invaded Austria.
What Frankl discovered was that those who survived the brutality of the concentration camps were those who had some meaning in their lives. Specifically, Frankl called it, “the human capacity to creatively turn life’s negative aspects into something positive or constructive.”
Today, psychologists who study posttraumatic growth (ie., growing or becoming stronger as a result of adversity) will summarize the strategy used for overcoming adversity as “benefit finding.”
As the term suggests, benefit finding refers to searching for deeper meaning or engaging in some kind of positive life change after a painful event.
Applying this To Your Life
Here is how you can engage in benefit finding.
- Think of a difficult life event that you’ve been through in your past. It’s important that you select an event that is no longer affecting you negatively today.
- Now ask yourself the following questions:
- What did I learn about myself?
- What were some of the healthy things I did to make it through that difficult period?
- What are the lessons I learned about life that can benefit me today?
Summary
When faced with adversity and pain, we often need to look for any sign of hope. And if you put effort into finding something that will sustain feelings of hope, then you are also setting yourself up to grow from that pain.
Remember that growing from pain doesn’t “just happen.” It requires effort. And so does one’s ability to remain hopeful during difficult times. One strategy to build and nurture hope is to remind yourself of the lessons learned from past difficulties — moments when you thought you’d never make it, only to come out better and stronger because of it.
I hope this post helps to remind you of your victories in moments of adversity, and how lessons from your past can help you to find hope in the present moment.
Richard
If you enjoyed this post, then pick up my new book, The Promise Wheel: Psychology For Growth and a Balanced Life. I provide dozens of strategies and insights on how to improve your health, relationships, and career so that you can achieve personal balance, feel less stressed, and have fun again.