Everything is Here to Help Us
When I experience frustrating situations, people, and emotions, I cope by finding a way to turn these challenges into catalysts for personal growth. Aside from abusive situations, a good mantra for this is, “Everything is here to help me.” By shifting our mental habits, we can turn these negative situations – from interpersonal challenges to painful internal emotions – into tools for growth. You too can apply these techniques to your life. Here’s how:
Learning to Respond Gracefully to Others and Ourselves
People who practice patience, flexibility, open-mindedness, and big picture thinking usually experience happier lives. It’s often much easier to respond this way in pleasant situations, however, than it is when we face difficulties and feel stressed.
But we want to be able to respond gracefully even in tough times, because that’s when there’s the most benefit. Just as athletes practice daily to perform better in competitions, so too can we practice to increase our chances of automatically acting skillfully under pressure.
We can change our mental response habits by:
- Seeing other people’s behavior less personally
Other people’s behavior often has much less to do with us than it does with them and their own difficulties. In fact, people are usually just thinking of themselves, not us – just as we do. So we can cultivate the belief that people’s obnoxious behavior usually reflect inner pain rather than deliberate attempts to hurt us. There are obvious exceptions, but it’s usually true. Viewing such unpleasant interactions through this lens – instead of taking it personally – may not make these interactions pleasant, but it can help us leave the situation feeling more inconvenienced than personally affronted.
*
EXAMPLE: If while driving, someone swerves in front of us, they’re not trying to cut us off, they’re probably just stressed and trying to get where they’re going faster, oblivious to how this affects others. So in this situation, let’s interpret the poor driving as reflecting their unknown inner stresses, instead of personal disrespect. And if someone cuts us off, we can even wish for their well-being. This diverts our attention from how their behavior has inconvenienced us, reducing our annoyance.
* - Using stressful situations and people as growth opportunities
By shifting our focus from judging others to trying out different self-management skills, we can turn even frustrating situations into training grounds for personal growth. Drivers who cut us off or people who yell give us opportunities to try out different strategies for staying calm, patient and flexible under stress. We can view everyone we meet or learn about as our teachers in some way. If their conduct inspires us, we can emulate their skills and behaviors. If their conduct alienates us, we can view them as examples of what not to do.
* - Setting daily intentions to reshape behavioral patterns
It helps to focus on substituting opposite behavior patterns for the behaviors that currently cause us the most pain – but this is often hard to do in the moment. Starting our day by setting a conscious intention to do so – rather than just going on autopilot – can make it easier to cultivate awareness and make healthy responses part of your routine. Tracking progress over time, through frequent journaling or other written tools, can also aid this process.
*
EXAMPLE: If we tend to be hypersensitive to perceived slights, we can set a daily intention to look for opportunities to be tolerant and gracious. If we struggle with controlling tendencies, we can proactively look for opportunities for letting go and trusting that things will still turn out ok. In time, these behaviors will become automatic.
Exploring our Emotional Pain
When we repeat harmful behaviors and realize that we’re resistant to changing these patterns, it often helps to ask ourselves: what we are afraid to lose? We may fear losing money, prestige, safety, opportunities, a sense of being right, or maybe we’re afraid for a loved one’s current or future well-being.
We can then analyze the likeliness of our fears coming true, and compare that with the potential successes that might occur if we try to respond differently. We’ll usually see that any short-term losses from change will hurt far less than continuing to stay stuck in stale, disheartening personal and relationship patterns.
Often, however, our biggest fears aren’t of material losses or mishaps, but of painful emotions that we may encounter. But this emotional pain can actually help us grow:
- Loss: Creates new beginnings and exposes inner strength
While losses are usually painful, they often create space for beneficial new situations to emerge: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end”. Additionally, when we lose some of the external things or even relationships where we’ve put too much of our self-worth, it can push us to look more deeply within us for sources of security that will never leave.
* - Anger: Allows us to create the distance necessary to address pain
When we feel overwhelmed by a painful situation, we can become angry. These feelings can serve as an internal alarm clock to prompt us to temporarily step away from the situation and look at any deeper inner pain such as sadness, hurt, and fear that may underlie our anger. Once we’ve identified and tended to our underlying pain, we’re usually more able to return to the situation and try to productively resolve it.
* - Sadness: Allows us to release and grow
Sadness can be how our hearts adjust to loss and release unhealthy attachments. When sadness plays this role, it ultimately clears space within us to welcome new happiness.
* - Disappointment: Helps us recalibrate expectations
Disappointment comes from dashed expectation. It hurts, but we can still use disappointment for growth if we view it as an opportunity to adjust our People often don’t consider that having unrealistic expectations can cause sadness if things don’t work out, and often overestimate how much of their lastinghappiness comes from having things go their way. Many people base their happiness on external outcomes, and conversely rely too little on generating happiness from within.
* - Resentment: Can encourage taking healthy risks
Resentment comes from blame, but underneath this, there’s often jealousy towards those who show more freedom of will than we let ourselves express. When we see resentment as a reminder of how often we hold back from expressing our greatest potential, we can use it as a prod to take healthy risks.
*
In summary, we can maximize our growth by starting each day by consciously reminding ourselves of our unskillful habits, and by making an intentional effort to practice better ones. We can remind ourselves to view difficult people and situations impersonally so we’re less likely to feel aggrieved. And we can decide to see the growth potential that resides in even our painful emotions.