How to thrive despite the chaos

Times are tough, but we don’t have to let them destroy us. This is how we’ll learn to thrive despite the chaos.

by: E.B. Johnson

It seems like everywhere you look today, you’re staring into the face of anger and chaos. People are angry about traffic. People are scared about COVID-19 and the warming climate. People are angry about politics and coffee cups and Youtube videos and every other thing in-between. You can see the anger and unhappiness in people’s faces. You can read it in their Facebook posts and hear it in their voices. We’re all angry and scared. So what can we do about it? How can we find our peace and solitude again?

It can be hard to maintain our cool when we’re living in a world that feels like it’s in fire and packed full of stupid people, but it’s crucial to maintain this state for our physical and mental wellbeing. The fact of the matter is,bad things happen to everyone. Today, it’s coronavirus, but tomorrow it might be something else. If we live long enough in this life, we all come to encounter tragedies that change us and shape us in the fires of their adversity. One of the biggest lessons we can learn in this life is how to turn fear and tragedy into the fuel we need to thrive.

Getting familiar with suffering.

When we are injured by life’s jostling, it’s easy to get mad at yourself or some aspect of the situation you find yourself in. You get angry and question who you are and the people around you. And in the end, you wind up in more distress as you fight an uphill, losing battle. It is this resistance to things that don’t go our way that causes suffering in our lives. Our inability to accept things as they are is the double-edged sword that wounds us time and time again — making life seem impossible to live.

The Buddhists have an equation that summarizes this idea nicely: Pain x Resistance = Suffering. Rather than resisting our pain, creating more suffering in our lives, we have to learn to accept ourselves and our circumstances for who and what they are. When we come to find this level of authentic acceptance, we can develop understanding and compassion for ourselves and the people around us.

Those who can accept their authenticity are those who are happier in their relationships and happier with themselves. The accept their current reality and embrace it with open arms, paying attention to their thoughts, feelings and desires without allowing them to control the situation. Being accepting and compassionate with yourself is a choice and one that must be made consciously every day. Plan for a better future and develop supportive friendships and you’ll find acceptance blooming everywhere in the life around you.

Finding silver-lining solutions.

When the bad gets worse, it becomes easy to dwell on all the ways life is disappointing us. We allow ourselves to get stuck in a negative feedback loop, and from this comes an array of negative behaviors and coping mechanisms. When we get stuck in the doom and the gloom, we bring more doom and gloom into our lives. That’s why it’s so critical to stay focused only on the things you can control when things get rough.

Rather than getting hung up on the things that you can’t change, you have to learn to focus instead on the changes you can bring about. Letting go of our attachment to the things we cannot control allows us to relieve some of the stress that is suffocating us.

To move yourself into a more resourceful state of thinking, consider your strengths rather than your weaknesses. Dwell on the things that you can do, rather than the things you can’t do or the problems that you have. Focusing on solutions, rather than just the disappointments around us allows us to overcome our suffering and survive and thrive in ways we never imagined before.

Our negative coping mechanisms.

Unpleasant situations cause us a lot of discomfort. Whether the discomfort we face is big or small, we want the pain and suffering caused to be over — fast. Part of coming to accept life “as is” is learning also to control the negative impulses and urges that come along with the tougher parts of living. We look for things that feel good to replace the things that feel bad in our lives, but that often leads us down a rabbit hole of even more negativity.

Self-victimization

When someone has an extremely high locus of control, they constantly blame the people and circumstances around them for everyting. Rather than taking responsibility, they blame others and try to make themselves feel better by blaming everyone around them. Playing the victim is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you forever think of yourself as a victim, the world will see you that way and treat you as such. When you believe that everyone around you is responsible for your life, you start to believe that you can’t control your future and that’s when things go south.

Giving up

We all know that person who just gives up every time things get a little challenging or uncomfortable. They lose hope and walk away from things that could have been made better, given just a bit more time, and when they do so they shut the door on incredible opportunities. Deciding it’s “not worth it” is often an excuse to do nothing. If we want bigger, better and happier lives, we have to find a way to keep going; and we have to do it of our own power.

Letting depression win

Many of us have faced depression and know how brutal and debilitating the disease can be. Learning to avoid the things that let the depression monster back in is imperative in finding a way forward. When we aren’t careful in managing our emotions, we can find ourselves sinking back into that dark place where more darkness breeds. Rather than dwelling in the bad and letting our lives be taken and destroyed, we have to learn to stand up for ourselves and keep the depression at bay by facing our situations bravely and honestly.

Self-blame game

While blaming others isn’t the solution to “finding a way out”, neither is taking on blame for the sins of the entire universe. Take responsibility for the things that are under your control and learn to let everyone else handle their own guilt. Even when we make self-deprecating comments like “I’m so stupid,” we are blaming ourselves for things that are outside of our control. Realize what baggage is truly yours and what baggage belongs to others.

Reacting with anger

When we feel out of touch or out of control with a situation, we often react in anger. We lash out at the people and things that matter the most to us, and shift the blame to them when we can’t control ourselves. Much like victim-blaming, reacting with anger is just another way to make excuses and shift our feelings of guilt and disappointment to a more palatable place.

The 8 best ways to accept, survive and thrive when the going gets tough

While it is far more comfortable to believe that the darkest parts of life will never touch us, that just isn’t true. Learning to accept yourself and your life is more than just getting beyond the negative coping mechanisms that drag you down. It’s also about developing new habits that allow you to thrive when the going gets tough.

1. Find the deeper lessons

Everything that happens in our lives has a silver lining and every bad thing we experience has something good to teach us. Whether it’s a failed relationship, losing a friend or even the current COVID-19 crisis, we can always learn something from the disappointing situations in our lives.

Changing the way we perceive our circumstances (and taking what good we can from them) allows us to move on and move forward in a positive and constructive way. Difficulties help us build resilience and give us the feedback we need to grow as individuals; it’s all up to us and how we process that feedback.

Identify the lesson that your situation has to teach you and move on as quickly and as efficiently as you can. There’s something good to be gleamed, but you might have to do some digging to find it. You can’t survive this hurdle until you learn how to make the best our of a bad situation. Thrive by moving beyond with a positive perspective.

2.. Embrace your support systems

While it might seem like the weight of the world has left you alienated and alone, it’s important to remember that you’re never alone — no matter how bad you might feel or how far away from home you might be. We’re all in this together and, thanks to modern technology, someone we love is never more than a phone call or a FaceTime away.

No matter what you might think, there is someone out there who is experiencing the exact same thing that you are. That someone is also down and also feeling like the going has gotten impossible. When you realize that you aren’t the only one that feels this way, it can do a lot to relieving the pain and the guilt and the shame that you feel.

The best way to get out of a self-victimizing mindset is to remember that there are other people out there that know exactly how you feel and there are many more who have already gone through what you’re going through right now. If they survived this, you can too…but you’ve got to hold on. Stop allowing your negative thoughts to beat you down or take away your natural state of joy. Baton down the hatches and strengthen your reserves. You will weather this storm but you have to make a commitment now.

3. Get objective with your perspective

Learn to detach yourself from things and see them as they are: things that happen, regardless of who we are or where we come from. Life is little more than a culmination of experiences, some good and some bad. Everything is random and there is no guarantee of perfect life, no matter how hard you work or what “rules” you follow.

We are responsible only for our reaction to a situation and the feelings we attach to it. Everything else is (relatively) outside of our control. We cannot control other people, we cannot control how they react, and we cannot control how they feel about us. Let go of your need to be in control of everything and let go of the things that don’t suite you any longer.

Remove the feelings you have about your circumstances and look at the entire situation and all its variables objectively. It’s easier to cope when you can consider the full picture and realize that there are many more moving pieces than just the ones under your play. Shifting our perspective empowers us to see the world in an entirely new light, as well as our place within in. Reclaim your power and reclaim control of your calm by getting objective with your perspective.

4. Vent the frustration

The longer we remained pent-up and shut from our normal life and activities, the more lost and frustrated we can feel. If you bottle up all those little aggravations, they’re going to culminate in one grand explosion of feeling. Rather than brooding or stewing, release your frustrations and realize that being frustrated isn’t going to solve anything.

Reach out to a good friend and share your frustrations with them, or establish a mindful journalling practice that allows you to get back in touch with your emotions and deep, intimate needs. You can also channel your feelings into a new sport or hobby, or just gradually release with some peaceful and quiet one-on-one time.

Whether you go berserk or not, chances are the situation you’re in is not going to change any time soon. When we allow our agitation to call the shots, we allow it to prevent us from making good decisions. It’s better, instead, to consider all situations calmly and give ourselves time to cool and think things through. Control your feelings, control your mind. Over time, you’ll get back into a state of calm and be able to find stable ground again.

5. Understanding choices

Even if everything else is out of control, you are 100% in control of how you react. We always have a choice when it comes to the way we handle the hurdles that life throws at us. While we may not be able to control our spouses or our children or our employers, we can most certainly control our behaviors and we should do so at every opportunity.

You will be able to face even the worst things in this life when you realize that you can always decide how much they impact you. Life is a gamble, and though you may not be able to change the cards you’re dealt, you can most definitely change the way you play your cards.

There is always a choice when it comes to how we react to adversity. We make a million different choices every day and our reaction to life is just one of them. Actions, whether benign or life-altering, are always a choice. Choosing wisely is the difference between thriving and surviving. Understand your choices, and make the decisions that align best with the future you’re trying to build.

6. Start asking for help

One of the greatest life lessons we can learn — in any instance — is the art of asking for help when we need it. As humans, we’re social creatures, and that means reaching out to friends, family and loved ones when we need a helping hand. When we allow ourselves to look for help, we allow ourselves to open up. And that’s a beautiful transformation to undergo.

Our society isn’t one that values weakness and is one that encourages us to hide our weaknesses at all costs. Social media has coached us into a “highlight reel” mentality and we feel inferior when we show the world anything but our “best”.

Rather than asking for help, we stay silent in our shame and guilt and, over time, these feelings become corrosive and toxic to our authentic selves and the relationships we share with the people around us. Learn to ask for help when you need it. Learn to reach out to others when your’e feeling vulnerable or too weak to go on. Suffering in silence isn’t noble and it won’t make you better for the burden. Stop waiting to be rescue and ask for the assistance that you need to get through the tough times.

7. Learn to love the challenge

Life is a journey and it’s full of beautiful growth but also disastrous adversity. Everything happens for a reason but we have to embrace that adversity in order to bloom into our authentic selves.

Life is full of difficulties and it is these difficulties that test our nerve and forge the behaviors and beliefs that make us strong and empowered individuals. Adversity is a chance to grow, and a change to get in touch with that natural and natal sense of human compassion. When you embrace adversity as a learning lesson, it makes the pain easier to bear.

Rather than seeing obstacles as stop signs, we have to see them as detours, and find better ways to reach the goals we set for ourselves in life. When something gets in our way, it’s doing little more than directing us down a new path on which we can begin to form those core pieces of ourselves that carry us on through life.

8. Focus on what you can control

Those who grow are those who are focused on the things they can change (rather than the things that they can’t.) Center your development and growth around the things that you can do and the things that you do well.Dwell on the solutions, rather than the problems.

By focusing on what you can do, rather than what you can’t do, you can boost your self-esteem and help increase your life confidence. Zeroing in on our strengths when we’re feeling down can also inspire us and help open up new and exciting opportunities, as well as shift our thinking from negative to positive (therefore attracting more positivity to your life).

Action creations empowerment but to act, you have to know what you’re capable of. Spend some time with your strengths and your weaknesses and get to know them like the powerful tools and weapons they can be. Consider creative ways in which you can utilize your strengths in order to open new doors into the future. There is no limit to what you can do when you’re working with your natural talents and abilities.

Putting it all together…

Bad things are a natural part of life, and the quicker we come to accept that, the quicker we can get to creating the future we deserve. Acceptance hastens healing, but to come to that level of acceptance, we have to develop the tools that allow us to cope when the going gets tough.

Rather than turning to the negative things that bring us empty satisfaction, we have to focus instead on the things that we can change, and make better choices that leave us poised to go after our futures with all the conviction we are capable of. The unpleasantness in life is largely determined by how we react to the situations and circumstances we find ourselves in. Have the courage to stand up and take responsibility for your future and you’ll find yourself surviving and thriving far beyond the expectations of anything you ever imagined before.