How to Overcome Adversity and Achieve Your Goals
Adversity is an inescapable part of living, whether it comes in the form of an accident, sickness, or the loss of loved ones. The way we respond to these challenges differs from one person to another. You may be able to thrive when life tries to bring you down while someone else may struggle to get through.
Adversity is an unpleasant thing to experience, but successful people find ways to overcome them and achieve their goals. They may even find the silver line hidden within and thrive.
You can use the challenges you face to your advantage, so let us talk about how to overcome adversity and achieve your goals.
Use Humor as a Weapon to Fight Adversity
Humor can be a powerful ally when you are facing life challenges. It can be exceptionally healing for your body, mind, and soul. It brings about positive emotions when you need them and eases your pain.
In a paper published in Cognition & Emotion, Stanford postdoc Andrea Samson and psychology Professor James Gross found that subjects who made jokes reported improvements in positive emotions while negative ones diminished.
However, humor alone would not completely take the pain away. It is an effective coping mechanism, but you need to combine it with other strategies to better navigate adversities.
Become More Self-Compassionate
It is common for us to feel compassion for others but find it hard to do the same for ourselves. We tend to be hard on ourselves, and self-forgiveness is usually hard to achieve.
One of the best places to start when overcoming adversity is to practice self-compassion. It will allow you to have the confidence to push through and keep moving forward, all while boosting your wellbeing.
Although some people are naturally more self-compassionate, research suggests that you can train yourself to cultivate more empathy for yourself by being more positive, accepting, and forgiving.
Master Your Own Emotions
How you respond to adversities determines your ability to deal with and overcome them. In other words, if you do not become the master of your emotions, they will be the masters of you.
The best approach to achieving mastery over your emotions is to be aware of them when they surface. Whenever something triggers your negative responses, take a step back before you react, then study the messages that these emotions are giving you. You can then craft plans to deal with these challenges in a more constructive way.
Believe in Yourself and Abilities
Believing in yourself is the most important belief of all. Self-confidence and unwavering trust in your abilities are the keys to overcoming any adversities.
Trust yourself and always recognize when your inner thoughts are working against you and reframe them. When you catch yourself saying, “I cannot do this.” change it to “I will try!”.
According to a chapter called Self-Confidence and Performance from Learning, Remembering, Believing: Enhancing Human Performance, your belief in your abilities can affect how motivated you are, how you feel about yourself, and the amount of energy you put into achieving your goals.