Discovering the gift in your problems

A friend of mine has just gone through a tough year. She has dealt with sickness, the death of a loved one, given up her work and moved house all within a 12 month period. For a long time she described the year as being, “a disaster of a year”. Then one day she wrote to tell me that she’d decided to change her description of the year from being a disaster to “a year of big changes”. She went on to say me that although many of the events that she’d experienced were painful they also resulted in her being happier than she’d ever been even though she was still dealing with the pain of loss.

To wish for a problem free life is to wish for the impossible dream. It simply doesn’t exist no matter how positive or focused you are. The key to living a happy life is to develop the habit of looking for the gift in your problems. Life’s problems are often the signposts that tell us that we need to: reassess who we are, how we respond, whether we have beliefs and habits that are holding us back and whether our choices make us, and the people we care about, happy.

Carol was tired of feeling stressed. When Carol described what made her feel stressed one of the things that she said was that she spent up to an hour and a half twice a day “fighting traffic”. The words you use are often the clue as to the opportunity open to you so when I questioned Carol further, asking her about other stressful experiences, most of her responses included the word ‘fighting’. She told me of her financial problems and how for years she “fought to keep her head above water”. She also said how she “fought” to create peace in a stressful work environment, and how she had to “fight” constantly for her rights from an inconsiderate employer. In other words Carol told me that life was presenting her with countless opportunities to overcome her belief in the need to “fight” in order to get what she wanted.

Once you become aware of the gift in your problems you then need to take action to change the belief or situation. Carol decided it was time to stop fighting. She began by watching her words and substituted “working towards” instead of “fighting”. She chose to work towards financial abundance, harmony in the work place, and stress free travel. She chose to act like a powerful person who believed she could transform her life. And she also began reviewing her choices, particularly travelling to a job so far from her home. All of these small changes made Carol aware that she was so accustomed to “fighting” that she often made life harder for herself than it needed to be.

It was relatively easy for Carol, with some help, to discover the gift in her problems. Some opportunities are not so easy to find but they are there if you really look for them. My son’s death, when he was just five years old, led me to work at being a better person because I needed to find a purpose in this tragedy. This motivated me to develop the habit of looking for the good in every situation, then sharing what I learn with others.

Life’s problems are simply life’s way of telling you it’s time to review. By accepting the challenge and looking for the good you can transform your life.