If you have a string of bad events occurring in your life, it becomes difficult to work on fighting through them.

Especially when you’re losing your strength each time you get knocked on your ass.

The truth is that a lot of people who are going through difficult moments in their life don’t actively work on pushing through them.

They just find temporary coping mechanisms to help them through, even if they aren’t the healthiest. But there are positive things that can come from hard times.

How the Bad Times in Your Life Actually Make You Stronger

When life gets hard, it’s easier to just avoid what’s happening right in front of you. Ignoring it until it goes away.

You can build up your own internal strength by showing up during the roughest moments in your life.

Sometimes this feels scary and it will always be uncomfortable. And you may question why you decide to put yourself through the pain, instead of covering it up with something easier.

Trying to avoid pain in life just isn’t possible. Eventually, it will catch up with you, just like it does with everyone else.

Begin to Trust Yourself More

When things don’t go as planned you may look to your closest friends for a shoulder to cry on.

This can be a great way to let go of some of the frustration, but it isn’t helpful if you always rely on other people to pull you out.

When you start to become the victim of your life, you lose the strength to keep fighting.

At some point, you have to believe in yourself enough to trust that you can make it through this bad situation.

How do you do that? Well, it just starts with being alone with yourself more and seeing what you’re capable of.

Instead of calling up a friend every time, take a drive by yourself.

Go on a walk with your dog and listen to some music. Get some distance from everything building up in your head.

You can even try practicing meditation or yoga to calm your mood.

When you learn to trust yourself, you build confidence. And when you’re confident enough with who you are, you know you can make it through to the other side.

You may not feel like you’re good enough or worthy enough of being happy.

You have to work on breaking that thought process and putting up a fight for yourself when your life gets hard.

Friends and family are a great support system and important to have. But believing in yourself ensures you can survive anything on your own if needed.

Develop a Strong Support System

After you learn to trust yourself more, having a strong support system is essential to building enough strength during the most difficult times in your life.

We can’t always rely on other people to solve our problems so that’s why I encourage you to get more in tune with yourself, first.

Once you get more in tune with yourself and build up enough internal strength, you then learn when you do need to reach out for support. We can all use a helping hand during difficult times.

A strong support system consists of the best people you want to have in your corner. The ones who don’t judge what you’re going through.

They listen and sympathize with you. Sometimes they might give you a much-needed kick in the butt.

Other times they are the ones who you can laugh with when life just gets way too serious. This can be a large mix of people or just a small few.

If you find you are surrounded by a lot of negative people who just believe the world is out to get them (especially during difficult moments), then it’s probably time to try and find some new people to be around.

Find people who lift you up, and who you can lift up as well. The ones who put in as much effort as they receive are the ones you want on your side.

Build Up Your Mental Strength 

Your brain is a muscle and it is possible to build its strength.

If you struggle with anxiety or depression, building up your mental strength can go a long way.

You learn how to become more resilient in the face of stress and overwhelm.

You also learn how to control your thoughts better, and what you allow to have an effect on your life.

Building up your mental strength takes consistent work. Just like working out any other muscle in your body.

You want to spend time on it daily to see improvement. And you might think it’s not possible at first.

Our brains are tricky in the way that you can’t physically see any improvement—it’s all in your head. So, you can convince yourself it doesn’t work before you even try.

Some of the best ways to build up your mental strength include:

• Taking action daily, even when you don’t feel like it
• Stop taking on other people’s emotions
• Structuring your days to help fight against anxiety
• Working with your anxiety instead of against
• Stop taking things so personally

These are just some examples of what mental strength looks like. You can learn how to do this by working on it daily.

The more you build up your mental strength, the more resilient you will become to life’s toughest moments.

There are so many people out there who have faced tremendous amounts of tragedy and grief and who suffer from anxiety. These people also have come out on the other side and are some of the strongest people you will ever meet.

Because they know what they can and can’t control. And they have worked hard at building up strength mentally to endure whatever life throws at them.

Stop Relying on Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms

While I will admit that I do enjoy a large glass of wine after a crazy stressful week, I don’t rely on it every time something goes wrong.

When we start to rely on the things that help numb us to the pain, we lose our strength to keep fighting the battle.

There are many different kinds of unhealthy ways to cope with stress in life.

And I don’t have to tell you that they are just a temporary fix that will only make you feel worse later.

Stop trying to fix your problems with these things.

If you do something every once in a while, to just take a break and want to enjoy yourself, then do it.

It’s if you do need it daily or most days out of the week in order to push through.

You don’t actually need these things, it’s just your brain thinking you do.

Letting go of unhealthy coping mechanisms can quickly build up your strength.

Just letting go of the reliance alone will make you feel better about yourself. You’ll also start to believe that you are strong enough to make it through without those things.

Moving Forward

I understand that there are certain moments in life that are crazy hard to get through.

Losing someone close to you or something that played a huge part in your life is never easy.

If you really do feel like you’re struggling and aren’t sure where to look next, I highly suggest reaching out to a professional.