Top 10 Lessons Difficulties In Life Teaches Us | Face Difficulties With Gusto

There are two responses to difficulties or challenges in life. Either we greet it with the same happiness level as success or let it overwhelm us for a long time and don’t do anything about that. The great thing is, man is not made to lose hope completely.

The second response is not permanent (no hope of a dead person becomes alive, not talking about that for now); otherwise, problem-solving methods would not have existed. And neither would we have any progress in knowledge; let’s see why.

Every long-term vision requires sacrifice in the short term. If you want to have a healthy body, you will have to exercise every single day to maintain that. If you want to develop an excellent, knowledgeable mind, you will have to study day in day out consistently, take notes, memorize and note things down, take assessments, and fry your brain a lot.

So difficulties in life, the ones that come upon us physically and mentally, are there to sharpen us further and help us become better. And facing challenges is the only way to do something worthwhile.

How so? Facing difficulties can help train our muscles. Which ones? The muscles that help us think long term instead of the short term. Every great man had a long-term vision in his mind when he struggled for what he struggled for. Money is a great thing to utilize, a necessity of life.

But do you know how much money Albert Einstein had when he died? Well, he was not known for his wealth, was he? We already know the difficulties that not being rich brings you, but we also know that most leaders and noble prize owners come from ordinary backgrounds. Why? Because they have to face difficulties all the time, and they are prepared for the struggle.

They may lack food, but not the flame. Now, let’s dive into the top 10 lessons difficulties in life teach us.

10. Defense Against Purposelessness

Earlier, the common population could quickly develop a disease called purposelessness. It means that you don’t know what you want to do in your life, in the near future even. The most the thoughts would reach would be a next movie coming out or a next game coming out. The problem with that? How long is an average movie? What about the interval between one movie and the next? What is he doing at that time? Waiting for the next, etc.

There is another thing. The people don’t have anything to aspire for other than money and fame. What happens when a person is born in a family which has both of these things, he/she may get depression as a gift; if he/she doesn’t get some difficulties in life, they don’t have any purpose.

9. Make People More Responsible

Entrepreneurs usually are famous for saying that “if you are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” They are also human beings who don’t like failures and would prefer success to come. Where does that attitude come from?

They have to have self-belief in themselves, in their ability to persist in the situation, no matter how difficult that may be. That is an essential difference in the attitude of an entrepreneur and, let’s say, a person on a job. A person on the job will never be on the lookout for more difficulties.

Whether he does his best on the job or he ends up lacking in several ways, as long as he is meeting a minimum target, chances are he is not going to get into trouble, and that’s usually good for him. That’s why job itself is a concept that trains people not to be risk-takers, not to take more responsibility than the bare minimum. In contrast, entrepreneurs have to take responsibility.

They can open their business because they say they will take some responsibility. If they are not responsible, no one but them is at loss. So difficulties are cultivating a sense of responsibility. Even for job-seeking people, difficulties like losing their job may make them emotionally more stable when they overcome that difficulty.

8. Develop patience

A necessary skill. Think we don’t need it? Think again. The fatal thing to any relationship is, you know what? Lack of patience! When we are not willing to compromise in a relationship, the relationship is on a downward trip.

Relationships fail most of the time when two selfish people or one selfish person are involved. It never came into observance that two givers had an unhealable crack in their relationships.

Difficulties are the perfect tonic that helps you develop the necessary amount of patience required. Difficulties have an added benefit in that you end up knowing who are your true well-wishers and who were there for the good times only.

You get to know your genuine friends, understand the importance of family, deepen the relationships that matter and leave the ones that don’t matter as much.

7. Increases Quality Of Life

How do difficulties increase that? Difficulties enable us to appreciate the things in life more than before. As the saying goes, “You realize the importance of something when you lose it.” Without difficulties in life, we would never learn to appreciate things. And since humans are forgetful by nature, difficulties are an excellent constant alarm that keeps us on the track of being grateful.

And gratefulness is said to be the most productive emotion on the face of this planet. When you are grateful, you are at more ease, you don’t need to run after things, and basically, it is the most treasured thing in the world, a treasure people fail to get. That’s where the next point comes in.

6. Trains For Life

Difficulties make us tough; I believe that experience tells us that. A person can’t be tough all the time and can’t be nice all the time as well. There are times when some solid hammer has to be dealt and sometimes that things should be let go.

A great training tool that tells us what to do when is facing difficulty in life. When we have seen how bad poverty can be, seeing the situation of someone else asking for a loan from you, again and again, becomes understandable.

At the same time, that difficulty helps us develop a kind of tenacious belief in ourselves, a confidence that when you were able to overcome that difficulty that seemed overwhelming at that time, the new difficulty or any challenge in life, you can handle it.

5. Develop Empathy

Familiar with this term? To feel what the other person is going through and understand his circumstances is Empathy. A very necessary skill required to be a human being.

Even elephants can adopt and take care of the children of others in their community. But, being able to understand more complex life situations and comfort each other is a distinguishing factor of human beings. And the core of that is Empathy that can only be developed through trials and difficulties.

I know of a case where a man built a cancer hospital in his rural area just because there his mother had died because of cancer, and she had nowhere to seek treatment. There are multiple cases in the world where someone built a hospital for some disease, some app for disabled people, or lost people all because they were hit in the face with that situation.

4. Gives Opportunity

There is a quote, “There is an opportunity in every difficulty, a man is only required to search for it” this is incredibly true.

There was a solution to a deeply rooted problem behind every good and successful business. Business is at its essence just a way to solve people’s problems while also being a profitable model, where the number of people helped varies from business to business; hence the number of problems they solve also differs.

While that may be true at the community level, how do the problems in your life serve as an opportunity to you? Your business is failing; you got bad grades, someone stole your wallet. How does that mean an opportunity? Well, there is a thing called intangible things. This makes me come to the next point.

3. Gives Guidance

When we face some trial and difficulty, we become a guide for ourselves. We not only become a guide for ourselves but for others too. For example – I failed in business because I didn’t listen to customers properly, and we can improve those after knowing the shortcomings.

Whether we lost our wallet, it was pick-pocketed, we met some bad guys in a dark street, or anything else. We can give someone else tips to avoid the same mistake, and that’s actually how our knowledge in science has progressed, no? I made this mistake, don’t make the same mistake. Make some other mistake, but not this one.

Also, suppose if someone is a disabled man, how does his suffering help? A handicapped man I know of playing cricket internationally. That’s inspiring. Don’t you think?

2. Prepares For Success

Struggling through the difficulties has this most essential benefit that weighs heavily; it may even be heavier than many of the others combined. It tells you where it hurts. It awakens a flame inside you. It tells us what we need to do in our life; it sets our vision.

There is nothing else that we can give due struggle to except the thing which burns our heart day and night, for which we jump into difficulties willingly and can’t sleep peacefully at night.

And that’s how people are prepared for success. It is impossible or possible when they have a fire that can not be put out no matter what anyone else says. They will put down this fire engulfing the whole forest with their tiny hands.

1. Overcoming Fears

Have any fears? Let’s find a difficulty! Facing fears is the most potent way to tackle our fears. The problem is not in fearing things; it is in letting them influence our decision-making and actions. With the help of this way, which is facing difficulties, again and again, you get to know deeply that you have the power to prevail over your fears also.

There is an additional bonus to difficulties; not only do they increase us in courage, as mentioned above, but they also make us less picky about the things in life, developing gratefulness. We become grateful for the clothes food we enjoy and do not find faults like the food is not salty.

Conclusion

Difficulties reignite the flame that people have in their hearts. Whenever a person feels that things are going okay, but his heart is still feeling down, advice from personal experience is just to look for a difficulty. As always, “Look for the opportunity while facing the burns of difficulty.”