Melvin Feller is known as “The Entrepreneur’s Mentor” because Melvin walks his talk. Melvin Feller has been there and done that and more importantly, Melvin Feller knows how to transfer the skill set for success. This is main reason that he has been the sought after coach to hundreds of small business owners, entrepreneurs, Realtors, Real estate investors and service professional internationally. Melvin Feller’s main talent is to show you how the step by step process to build and enjoy a successful 6-figure plus business while having a balanced life. Melvin Feller maintains an office in Texas. Melvin Feller is currently pursuing another graduate degree as an MBA.
Just like what Steve Jobs said in his commencement speech at Stanford, “Sometimes life’s going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.” It is great to understand that life is a series of seasons. You can experience the best the world has to offer in that one moment, and at next, the worst of life can hit you. However, please understand that it is not what you go through that defines you; it is how you deal with the issues.
Remember, it is your choice and your decision that determine your life. It is what you do that makes you, and you are the only one. Therefore, it is imperative that you choose to do the right thing, and that you live a remarkable and meaningful life.
Here are a few suggestions of what you can do when life gets hard.
Understand that things will change
One of the most important keys is to understand that things will never stay the same forever. If you are facing some tough times right now, do not worry because things will never remain the same. After all, It can never rain forever, right? Once the rain is over, the sun will come out and shine. Just endure the challenges, learn from them, and the good times will eventually come.
Study history and you will understand that things will change over time. In addition, look at the stock market, it can never continue to rise, nor can it fall and remain low all the time. It will rebound when the time is right. The same goes for your life. Things may not stay the same for the long-term. However, when you are facing difficult times, understand that they are not here to stay as well.
Yes, difficult times, challenges, setbacks, failures, and defeats are a necessary process in life. Regardless of whom you are or what you want to accomplish in life, these are common learning experiences that you must pass through. It is a normal occurrence of life.
Take it as a challenge, as a test from God, and as a stepping-stone to your success. How do you think Thomas Edison was able to discover the filament to make the light bulb works? Well, it was through failures. Without failures, there will never be successes. Failures, defeats, and challenges are what contributes to success and achievement. You learn the most when you fail.
In fact, people have learned, achieved, and evolved much more from their failures than their successes. Look at extraordinary people like Elon Musk, Michael Jordan, and Steve Jobs, etc., they were able to achieve outstanding results in life because they went through tough times and learned from their experiences.
Have a positive outlook
This is easier said than done. However, the saying, “Every cloud has a silver lining” is true. You cannot see the positive in the situation because you have not found it yet. Napoleon Hill, the best-selling author of Think and Grow Rich once said, “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”
Richard Branson discovered the idea to start an airline because he became stranded in an airport due to his flight being canceled. He was frustrated with the problem, but yet he chose to look from the positive side and he chartered a plane.
So look at the problem from a positive point of view and welcome frustration as a learning experience. You know that every problem and difficulty contains an opportunity to learn and grow. Therefore, just face it with courage and a smile.
No such thing as failure, only lessons
From what you have just learned, there are no failures, only lessons to learn. Even if you cannot find the opportunity hidden within the problem, it is all right as long as you treat the failure as a source of feedback and then fail forward.
The problem is that most people choose to look at failure as a defeat rather than a source of feedback and do not learn from it. It does not matter how many times you fall as long as you choose to get up and learn the lesson.
If you are a parent, are you going to stop your baby from trying to walk because she falls? Not at all, in fact, you will encourage her to walk and even teach her the proper way. Therefore, remember the same principle in your life as an adult to learn from your failures.
Focus on what you can control
Sometimes, situations are beyond our control and no matter what we do, we cannot change a thing.
Moreover, if you cannot change the situation, why worry? The if you can change it, then just do it.
I know that this is easier said than done, but it is a fact that every one of us must accept. We need to learn to focus on only what we can control. Many times, when a problem occurs, people focus on the problem and are trying to blame or find an excuse to get away from the problem. Do not do this. Instead, choose to focus on the solution.
God has a better plan for you
Sometimes when life gets hard, you have to realize that God has a better plan for you. I am not saying that you should give up or quit at all, but rather, I am saying that you need to choose to believe that
God has something better for you in store. Maybe God wants you to learn something that will change your life for the better forever. Alternatively, maybe God is testing your determination to see if it is something that you truly want. On the other hand, perhaps God is trying to show you another path to achieve something with greater returns. You just need to believe that something better is coming.
When you believe that something better is on the way, you will feel excited and thrilled rather than feeling worried and frustrated. In addition, when you feel good, you will often find the right path or the solution to your problems.
Reignite your motivation
Another important thing that must be done when you are facing hard times in life is to reignite your motivation. While it is true that you cannot solely depend on motivation because it comes and it goes, but sometimes, you need it to go through tough times.
What you can do is to revisit your purpose. Ask yourself why do you do what you do and always remind yourself of your purpose in life. More importantly, you can practice visualization and affirmation to keep yourself driven and to stay on track. Listen to motivational songs and read inspirational materials.
When your level of motivation is high, you will ask better questions even during tough times, such as instead of asking “Why me”, you will begin to say, “Try me”.
Third-party perspective
Look at the situation from another person’s point of view and see if you can find any angle of attack or any other solutions to your challenges.
When you are lost in the jungle, one of the methods to find your direction is to get to a higher ground and look at the place from a bird-eye view. This same strategy should be applied to your life. When you are, feeling lost or facing difficult times in life, step outside of the mess, and then look at the situation from a bigger perspective.
You have to free your mind and think from a different angle. Trying to figure out a way to get out of the labyrinth. However, when you look from the outside, things are much clearer.
Worst-case scenario
Yes, ask yourself what is the worst-case scenario whenever there are hard times. What is the worst that can happen? The reason being you will often find that the worst case is nowhere as bad as you imagined. Once you understand that things are not as bad as you imagined, you will feel calmer and more at peace. This is at the point when you can become creative and make better decisions.
People are often feeling that life is too hard because they are too obsessed with the fears that they imagined in their head, which most likely are not going to happen anyway. Remember, life is hard because many times you are being too rigid or are trying to hold on to something too tightly. It is your attitude of how you look at the situation that determines if your life is going to be hard or easy.
When you understand that the worst is not as bad, and you can still survive regardless of whatever happens, you will feel much better.
Express gratitude
everything is not enough no matter how much you actually do have.
When life gets hard, write down the things that you are grateful for in life. You can even express your appreciation by calling someone you are grateful for and telling them about it. After doing this, you will discover that the challenges and difficulties you face will become less significant especially when they are compared to everything great that you have in your life right now.
You are not alone
Realize that you are not alone in this world. If you are having tough times with your finances right now, notice that there are others, who are battling even tougher situations than you are. No matter what you go through in life, there is always someone going through the same thing or even worse things than what you are facing currently. Therefore, you are not alone. Because of this, it is not the end of the world. When you feel like a failure, think of someone who has gone through an even more difficult situation than you and those who were able to bounce back even stronger.
A great example for this is the motivational speaker, Les Brown. He has been labeled as “education mentally retarded” since young and has gone through many tough times on his journey to success. He has slept and bathed in his office, before he was rejected and had failed several times, and he bought a house for his mother, but it had to go to foreclosure due to his financial constraints.
As you can see, many people out there have gone through a life that is hard as well. However, these people never give up and they continue moving forward despite going against all the odds. Therefore, learn and become inspired by these extraordinary people.
Share your story
Whenever life gets hard, find someone and share your story. However, be selective and only share your story with someone who will support you and not someone who tries to drag you down. Everyone needs someone by their side from time to time. Nobody can survive alone in this world. This is especially true when you are facing some challenging times and you need the encouragement from others.
Focus and thoughts
Whenever you feel like everything is coming down around you, choose to change your focus your thoughts. There is no point to stay at the same stressed and frustrated state. Instead, to choose to do something else that will change your focus instead.
For example, you can play games, go for sports, do something that you like, follow your hobby, jog, swim, read a book, go shopping, watch a movie, and so forth. Whatever you do, you want to switch your focus and take your thoughts away from the situation so that your mind can have time to relax and think it through with your subconscious mind.
After you return to solve the problem, you can now think clearer and there is a higher chance that the solution will come to you from the middle of nowhere.
Stop and reflect
Getting yourself out of a slump is a conscious effort, and this is why you need to stop and reflect on what has happened to you thus far in life. However, if you continue to live life as it is, you will continue to stay at the same point without going any further.
It is when you stop, reflect, and make the necessary changes; you will be able to make sure that you are traveling in the right direction, heading to your desired destination. Most people allow life to happen to them as it is. They never question and they never reflect. As a result, they feel powerless and have no control over what is happening to them.
If you are serious about getting to a higher ground and improving your life, you must take time to reflect. Your previous actions and decisions got you where you are today. Therefore, if you reflect, review and make better choices, you will eventually end up getting to a better place.
When life gets hard, it is a signal telling you that something is not right. Hence, you must reflect on what went wrong and what you can do to course-correct.
Get active
Do you know that exercise can relax your muscle and help release your stress? The University of Florida states that exercise can improve your body image. Living an active lifestyle can make you feel more confident because you feel like you have accomplished something. Not only that, exercise stimulates energy production in your body cell, which makes you energetic and allows your brain to function better.
Write it down
Therefore, the next time when you are feeling stress, life is not proceeding according to your plan or feeling that the world is falling down around you; choose to put your feelings into words. You may feel less emotional.
Ask for help
The best way is to get the right help from the right people. For instance, you can seek out the experts within your industry and try to ask for their help. You will never know who will come to the rescue. Or else, find someone who can help you from your own church or community.
Push through it
This is more like an inspiration to you to work through the tough times. When life gets hard, hustle through it. Put in more action, work harder, pour in more effort, and work your way to get out of the seemingly impossible situation.
When you think about it, it is what all the successful people do to achieve extraordinary results in life. No matter what situation or what kind of difficulties they face in their journey, they choose to hustle through it.
Timing may not be right
If you have tried all the above and nothing seems to work, perhaps, you should accept that it might not be the best time to work out the issues you are going through.
Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, started his internet career in 1995. He built the “China Yellow Pages”, but somehow, the people of China were not ready for the internet and Jack had to delay his dream to a later year. He started once again in 1999 and founded Alibaba, the e-commerce giant that dominates the world today.
As you can see, sometimes, the time may not be the right time. Yes, life can be hard when you are trying to go against the movement or when things are not ready. No matter how tough you push, if the market is not ready, there is no way you can create the breakthrough.
Perhaps, if Jobs had not been fired, he would never had learned and became the great leader he was and transformed Apple into one of the most successful companies of the decade. Hence, sometimes, you may need to accept that it may not be the right time to strike.
Pray and have faith
One of the easiest things you can do when life gets hard is to pray and have faith that it will turn out all right because of God’s hand. Whatever you do, never underestimate the power of prayer and faith. When you truly believe in a higher power and you pray sincerely, something in you will change. You may feel more relaxed and less stressful because you are letting go and allowing God to take care of the situation for you.
You may start to see miracles and opportunities because you believe that God has created a path for you. So pray and have faith that things will become better no matter how dire the situation.
Perception
Regardless of the situation, you go through in life, whether it is hard, challenging, tough, or the other way round, you have to understand that you are the one who gives meaning to it. Meaning to say, if you think that life is hard, it is because you are making it hard.
How you look at things matter. While it may be a fact that you may feel financially strapped, not having enough money to put food on the table or you are late on your bills, you can still choose how you want to respond to the situation.
Just like how Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson puts it, “When life puts you in tough situations, don’t say “Why me”, just say, “Try me! “”
You are the one who is in control of your responses in life. Thus, you are the one who can choose what kind of life you want to go experience. When life gets hard, just increase your level and get stronger.
No comments:
Post a Comment