When something bad happens to you, how do you react? Most of us tend to wonder, “why me?” or have moments where we kind of wallow in self-pity for a while. These are common responses and innate to the human condition. But, let me ask you this. How helpful are these reactions?
The truth is two things happen when we find meaning in our suffering. One, we grow. A lot. It is through our most difficult times that we learn the lessons we need to learn. We also gain incredible experience and build up our resiliency. Two, by getting out of the victim mindset of “why is this happening to me?” we can shift our perspective to where what is happening can even be empowering. Perhaps now we can look at it like, “Maybe this is happening for me, because I will need to have gone through this for my next chapter.” For example, maybe you had to go through a horrible relationship to see what you want and need more clearly. And hopefully, that understanding of yourself is something that can help you choose your next partner.
While we might not have been able to control what happened to us, by finding meaning and purpose in our suffering, we can take ownership and responsibility of what we do next and how we choose to respond. We can take action to make things better for ourselves, rather than stay in a victim mindset and remain powerless.
Like Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, said in his book in Man’s Search for Meaning, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” We can’t change what happened to us. But we can change how we respond to it.
How to Find Meaning in Your Suffering
Stop Seeing Things as Black or White
Your challenges don’t have to be classified as “bad”. Life does not exist only on opposite ends of a spectrum; every experience has a positive and negative. Sometimes, we just need to look for it with a little more focus. Practice looking for the good in your situation. Be willing to see your pain in a positive light.
Shift in Mindset
We often think that we cannot be happy when we are struggling or something bad happens. However, the ability to be happy only depends on you, not the situation. There are countless stories of people who become disabled, lose all their money in a bad business deal, or suffer through incredible challenges, like concentration camps, but still find a way to feel optimistic. It goes to show that the ability to feel happy lies in your choice, not in your circumstances. If they can find light in such extreme situations, so can you!
Find the Opportunity
You can choose what the light represents to you, whether it is knowledge, wisdom, consciousness, God, or joy. The beauty about being broken is that it is when we can access deeper truths and learnings that we may have been blind to earlier. When we face challenges, that is when we often grow the most. When we reach rock-bottom, we often turn inward. Maybe that’s the nudge you need to return to your faith in God or in yourself. You become stronger. You access your truth.
It’s easy to get caught up in the egoistic material world, chasing money and success, displaying our best lives on social media, and running after fame or popularity. Arrogance and pride can blind us to what we truly desire. At that point, deeper truths, wisdom, and peace hardly seem important. Yet is that life truly satisfying? Quite often we are looking for happiness in the wrong places. And only when we face a setback, and get thrown off our path, do we realize we were on the wrong path in the first place! The happiness we want is inward, not outward.
Practice Gratitude
The best way to let the light in when you are wounded is to practice gratitude. When you are able to be grateful for everything that you DO have, rather than focusing on your pain, you can tap into the joy that is available to you. So focus on all the blessings in your life. As you practice feeling more grateful, you will find even more reasons to be grateful.
To take it a step further, try being grateful for the challenge you are facing. What is it teaching you? How is it helping you grow? How could it be shaping you for the better?
Light and Dark
Be aware of both joy and pain in your life, and practice being able to sit with both emotions. Know that it is a part of life; without darkness there is no light. Similarly, without the bad, you won’t be able to recognize the good. Being able to accept both ends of the spectrum is integral to being able to find inner peace.
Life is like a rollercoaster ride, with highs and lows. As much as we would like it, we can’t avoid the lows. Suffering is a part of life, as is joy. In fact, suffering can help teach us a lot about ourselves and help us grow in ways that an easy path cannot. So, the next time something “bad” happens, find the positive in it, and remind yourself that it is an opportunity to let some more light into your life. It is a blessing, not a punishment.
