10 powerful actions to take when life gets hard

Life isn’t meant to be easy. It is hard and rewarding. Some of us go through life naturally gifted and able to deal with tough situations. The rest of us struggle and some of us coast through. Having to deal with difficult, tough situations helps us grow and develop as a person. As the old saying goes, what doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger. Wouldn’t it be great to have a set of tools that you can use to help you through the tough parts of life? 

These 10 powerful actions that I will show you aren’t a set of hacks. They are tools and techniques that help people handle difficult situations. Some of these techniques are part of a philosophy that dates back thousands of years. Some tools are part of modern psychology and in the field of coaching.

Breathe

When you are under stress or struggling through a situation, it is easy to get caught up in the emotion. You need to be able to separate from what you experiencing and take stock. So that you can create space and choose your reaction to the stimulus. By breathing, I don’t mean your normal breath. It's mindful breathing where you are in the moment and focusing on taking a deep breath in and a deep breath out. 

Find a quiet place and sit up straight. Be mindful of your breath and follow your breath in. Feel the air through your nose and your chest and stomach expanding. Then once you have a full breath, slowly breathe out. Again follow your breath. Feel the breath in your belly and then your chest. Do this for three to four breathes.

This first powerful action can have an immediate effect on your physiology and your mind.

Changing your perspective

Change how you see things. Identify and break down your assumptions that allow you to see things a certain way. For example, you may react to things based on the assumption that your boss does not value your advice. As brilliantly captured in his book Obstacle is the Way, Ryan Holiday states “That is, when you can break apart something, or look at it from some new angle, it loses its power over you.” Try to find a different view of things.

Take your situation that is making life hard for you. Break down the situation into smaller bits, and ask yourselves questions to see what new angle you can take. Identify the assumptions that underpin your view. Ask yourself five whys, to find the root cause of the situation. See how you can look at it differently. Challenge your views. Use different emotions, inject humour or make it silly. Play the situation in your mind, forward and backward and with funny music and with squeaky voices. This helps to challenge your current view and see an alternate perspective.

Ask questions

By asking questions, you are trying to build your understanding by peeling back the layers. But not all questions are created equal. There are ok questions and there are questions that help you get a breakthrough. Make sure you know the difference. Tony Robbins has a whole chapter in his book “Awaken the Giant Within” on asking questions. In the book he says that “It’s not the events that shape my life that determine how I feel and act, but, rather, it’s the way I interpret and evaluate my life experiences.” and “I began to realize that thinking itself is nothing but the process of asking and answering questions.”. According to Tony, questions change what we’re focusing on and therefore how we feel, questions change what we believe and change the resources available to us. So ask yourself quality questions.

Don't ask questions that disempower you like "why does it always happen to me?". Ask empowering questions like "what lesson can I take from this?" Or "what is the one thing I can do to make this better?" This takes practice. Lots of it.

Take a walk

Taking a walk preferably in nature clears your mind. It helps create space and allows you to pause and take stock. Studies have shown that walking in nature helps you to calm down and reconnect with yourself. 

If you can take a walk in a park where there is nature. Walk around the block if you can't. If that is not possible walk up and downstairs in the office or around the office. Walking is exercise which releases hormones to help manage stress. Don't get lost in thought. Be present during the walk.

Writing

Writing also helps to crystalise your thoughts and articulate your concerns. It integrates the right and left hemispheres of your brain and creates a sense of calmness, and clarity and modulates your emotion. Mark Twain had a famous practice of writing angry letters to people he is upset with and never posting them.

A good practice is to keep a journal and try a daily writing habit. It doesn’t have to be articulate. You don’t have to share it. Write what comes to your mind without editing, stopping or reading it before you finish. Or you can have a set of questions that helps prompt your writing. It's up to you.

Lean into discomfort

When people binge eat, drink alcohol and practice any other habit that is not good for them, they are trying to feel good about themselves. They are trying to avoid the hard emotions that they may be feeling like anxiety or low self-esteem. Humans tend to retreat from discomfort, whether it's emotional or physical. It's a natural tendency. The problem is that it tends to make us soft. Discomfort is where you grow. 

When life gets hard, you will feel these things and instead of reaching for the chocolate, try to be with the emotion. Feel the emotion and accept it and don’t act on it. Don’t do anything that you would normally do, just sit with it. It doesn’t mean you do it alone. Get help and support if need be. Be comfortable with being uncomfortable. A couple of practices for this - try daily meditation. This will help you be more aware and present. The second powerful action to take is to do hard things, go to the gym and work out hard, and have cold showers in the morning. Do little hard things that take you outside your comfort zone. For example, talk to strangers if you are an introvert. Use these uncomfortable feelings to take positive action. What is the next smallest action you can take to improve your situation? Then take it, do the action. After you’ve done it, move to the next action. And then the next and so forth. It takes practice, lots of it. It's hard but don’t give up.

Focus on the present

Most of the time it's not the event themselves that cause us the pain. It's the interpretation of those events. It's our mind that gets in the way. It brings us down and makes us waste valuable energy and focus on our goals. Focusing on the present and not thinking about the meaning, gives us a bit of space and peace to continue doing our work. When you are ready, you can work out the meaning that you give to the event but not straight away

Being present helps you to be in the moment and deal with the current situation. It is hard because humans always are thinking about the future or present or other stuff and aren’t here with the body. This makes us disengage, unprepared to deal with the situation in front of us. Daily meditation is a great way to practice bringing back presence and focus into your life.

Three questions

Tony Robbins has identified three questions to ask yourself that can help challenge your current outlook and empower you. The first question is what is your focus? Focus not on what is missing or has gone wrong in your life. Answer the question with what you want and what opportunities the situation provides you. Second, what meaning do you give it? From the answer to the first question, what is the empowering and positive meaning are you going to attach to the situation. Third, what action will you take? Taking action moves you towards the focus that you set. No point in having all this without taking action because you remain where you are.

Ask these three questions about your situation. By consistently applying these questions, it will help you redirect your mindset and perspective toward action. It takes consistent practice. Try writing them down or ask them in your internal dialogue with yourself. It will be hard to break out of your habitual thought patterns but consistent practice helps. You can add these questions to the practice of asking better questions described above.

Pragmatic Approach

There is an excerpt in the book The Daily Stoic that is powerful in helping with difficult situations in your life. “Apply yourself to thinking through difficulties - hard times can be softened, tight squeezes widened, and heavy loads made lighter for those who can apply the right pressure.” by Seneca, On Tranquility of the Mind. This is an important lesson on applying yourself to overcome the challenges and obstacles to make a manoeuver, no matter how oblique or slanted. It will move you forward. 

Based on the quote from Seneca, how can you solve the current difficulty? Ask yourselves questions, be flexible, and look for opportunities. This requires the ability to do root cause analysis, being able to break down a problem, creative thinking and focus. Practice this on a daily basis on small problems. Create a checklist on how you would problem solve.

Don’t be a victim

It is easy to be the victim because it has a massive payoff. The mindset allows you not to take responsibility. A victim mentality allows you to blame others and make it all about the external factors. This makes you helpless. Do this enough times you learn how to be helpless. You will hate your life. You will try to escape it by trying to feel good (online shopping, binge eating). Take control. Take ownership. Everything that happens to you, own it. It may be as simple as accepting fate and seeing the good in it or changing your attitude. It may be taking small steps to turn things around. It may be hard but will turn your situation around.

We all have bad days. It's how we deal with it that is the difference. Do we abdicate all responsibility and ownership and wallow in self-pity? Or do we try our best to solve it and improve the situation? The challenge is to break your habitual patterns of behaviour. Develop awareness through daily meditation practice and journaling. Practice owning the problem, don’t blame others and don’t worry about the external events. Identify what you can do and then do it.

Practice

It's easy to write these down. Harder to implement and make a habit. View these as tools in your toolkit. Pick one out and use it when you need it. As with any tool in your toolkit, learn to use it before the first time you really need it. The old saying of ‘Practice makes perfect’ holds true here. You need to practice these things regularly and consistently so that it becomes a habit. Find a regular time each day to practice this. It doesn’t have to be a long session, a short time is fine. Some of these things work together, for example asking questions is a natural way to try and change your perspective. You don’t have to practice everything at once, pick one or two, practice them for a while and then once you are comfortable with them and have embedded them in your daily life, pick another two.