Jul
Articles, Building better men
3 Questions To Ask Yourself During Tough Times
In difficult times only a few that are willing to interrogate themselves without judgement and take responsibility. It is important to ask ourselves more empowering questions when we are going through tough times.
The usual reaction when things go south “whose fault is it?”, “why life is unfair?”, or “is it s or them?”. Real talk, such questions make the situation more difficult. When you’re in a slump, it’s extremely hard to see the positives in life.
With that said, here are 3 questions to ask yourself in during tough times.
What can I learn from this situation?
This is probably the last question to ask yourself when you’re in a hot mess. But that is all it takes to gain clarity. In taking time to answer it, you’ll learn something new from any situation. As soon as you get the lesson you get to move on.
In asking this one simple question, one gains a measure of distance from the situation. You can look at my mood, everything, everyone, and all the happenings around me and find ways to relate it to your life.
How did I get here?
Anyone can ask themselves “how did I get here?” and still not willing to admit their faults. It takes brutal honesty (and bit of kindness) to get to this point. Our minds are quick to defend, blame or come up with excuses to justify our actions.
It is important to take a step back and connect the dots – in most cases you’ll realise that YOU brought it all to yourself.
Did I show up as myself?
Tough times are here to teach us valuable lessons. Imagine losing yourself over a temporary situation. It’s OK to miss an opportunity or being misunderstood – as long you’re true to yourself. When tough times knock at your door ask yourself “did I show up as myself?” – not compromising yourself will help you to take the lesson with no regrets.
What are the lessons you are learning during these tough times?
We all have our ideas of how things ‘should’ be. So when our plans derail and the reality we find ourselves in is a far cry from the one we’d worked for, it’s easy to get into a wrestling match with life. But the biggest thing that messes us up is not the external conditions of our lives, it’s the picture in our heads about how we think those conditions should be. When you let go and accept your reality for all that it is, you reclaim energy lost to the battle against what it isn’t.
You’ve overcome tough times before. You will again. Sure they are not like the one you’ve dealt with now. But you have a 100% success rate at overcoming difficult situations. And if you think back to them, you’ll recall that at the time you worried you might now have what it would take only to discover that you did. Well that same tendency to underestimate your resiliency is still wired into you. So just remember, you are capable of difficult things. You’ve risen above them before , you win again.
get up, dress up and show up !!!
Thank you for this lovely article. Just to add on it, whenever I go through tough times as a Christian I ask myself, “what does God want me to learn from this situation” and then I try to look for answers instead of asking myself “WHY ME?”.
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