Going through a rough patch in your life and wondering how to be happy?
“Life may not be going well for you now, but as long as you are here, as long as you press forward, anything is possible. Hold on to hope.” – Motivational speaker, Nick Vujicic
What is a rough patch in life?
These are those times in life when the stars seem to align in your favour when everything is flowing smoothly and all the pieces fit together nicely without really much effort at all. And then there are those other times, where every day feels like a struggle and you feel like you are barely holding it together and you are pretty sure that if one more thing goes wrong you might fall apart completely.
It is called a rough patch.
“Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you”
How would you decode the meaning of a rough patch in life?
If you are experiencing lots of problems in a period of your life: you are going through a rough patch now!
Rough patches in life are not an anomaly but a reality. Everyone goes through these in life’s journey. It is important to analyse how you react in such situations, and how you handle these.
This way we see that it is quite normal to go through rough patches in life. These are bound to happen, but truthfully, some bad days are simply a smaller part of a difficult season. For some people, getting through a tough day might require a little extra grit, but when day after day is filled with hard things, it can be a different story.
“Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you”
Given that going through the rough patch is a harsh reality of life, here are a few perspectives you can apply to make the road just that little bit smoother – so keep your head up – and read on:
Even this shall pass away!
We know that the bad times will eventually pass, but when they fall on us, it seems we are standing in an endless dark tunnel, it seems endless – but, remember it will pass. The light awaits you, and the sun will shine again. So, know this is a chapter of your life, not your whole Life, and with that spirit implement as many of the positive perspectives as you can.
An opportunity to test resilience from the hard times not the good times!
How do you assess how strong or resilient you are? There is no measurement or any medical test for that. You know it only when face a rough patch in life. You always marvel how your friends or family survived such hard times and you cannot survive it. But God forbid, if it occurs, you will!
You show more courage in the given situation than you would have anticipated. Once you sit peacefully and think about those old times of your life’s journey, you will feel that you are going through a Bollywood movie. Indeed, reality is stranger than fiction. You can look back a lifetime and see how you have come through other stuff that you thought you could not cope with beforehand.
You know what? You did, that too with Elan. You have done it before; you will do it now and you will do it in the future. It is all in your head and each time you become more resilient until you know, in the core of your soul, when you have seen the darkest of dark, that nothing, nothing can ever truly throw you off course again.
You can choose to grow strong in the broken places
Best quote ever about hitting rough times? Not just hitting them but transcending them:
“We are all broken and wounded in this world. Some choose to grow strong in the broken places.” ~ Harold J. Duarte-Bernhardt
To achieve this, you need to be happy, enthusiastic, hopeful, and passionate about life.
In life, it has been observed that good times follow bad times and bad times follow good times. It is a roller coaster ride and you will get a chance being up there and down there. The cycle must be complete!
Acceptance of rough patches in life is the first step towards working around it. For this, we must first acknowledge that we live in an imperfect world and problems are inevitable.
That thought may seem daunting, but it is reality.
So, the first step in living and being happy even when facing obstacles is realizing that we will hit bumps along the roads we will travel, and we cannot always predict when they will happen.
If we keep this mindset, we will not feel entirely blindsided when we hit a barrier.
Keeping this perspective helps us to stay positive and remain joyful even through tough times because we realize the situation is temporary.
“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today,”—Thich Nhat Hanh
While we accept problems are a part of reality and will occur, we must never allow them to encompass all our time and thoughts.
If we focus too much on our challenges, it can break our spirit, crush our hearts, strip our energy, and steal our happiness. Much of our happiness is up to us.
So, embrace happiness, spread happiness, and be happyHO.
