Smart Emmanuel: What To Do When We Experience Tough Times 

Wouldn’t life be awesome if there were no hard days? How beautiful would work, business and family be if everything keeps going the exact way we desire? Fortunately, there are hard days. Yes, fortunately. I believe we are fortunate to experience tough times and that if we understand the purpose of tough times, we can use it as a stepping stone to create the beauty we desire in our homes, workplace and businesses. 

Why We Experience Tough Times 

Sadly, there’s almost no initial purposeful reason why we experience tough times. We experience tough times because we live in a free universe and we are free beings. When the right mixtures happen below the ground, a volcano can erupt without regard for the wishes of the humans who live on the land. The ground is free; it is not held back by our desires. Humans too are free. You can create a product you think customers want but they are free to not desire your product. We all can never want the same things. For the hungry whale, the swimmer is meat. For the turkey meat lover, the turkey is not a pet or an animal deserving peace; the turkey is just meat.

We are also imperfect humans and what we don’t know outweighs what we know. We are likely to make plans that fail largely because of our knowledge gap, and for this reason, we might experience a tough time or moment. We can make unfavourable decisions too. We can marry the wrong spouse, study the wrong course, befriend wrong friends and do many wrong things. We also grow up with imperfect people. We are likely to learn wrong habits. It’s an entire nexus of freedom, imperfection and desires. There’s no escaping tough time, however, some people have found a way to reduce their chance of experiencing tough times and they have mastered how to turn what should have been a tough season into a season of renewed faith and blessings. 

The Fortune In Tough Times 

What can be good about finding out you have cancer or losing a loved one? What’s the fortune in losing all your money to an unfortunate economic event? The truth is there’s no fortune in the event itself but there’s hidden fortune in the lessons. It’s hard to learn from pain but what’s harder is not learning and not passing this new knowledge. We recognise that tough times are a constant because of our freedoms, imperfections and desires so we have to take a winning position.

We have to understand that the universe is free to behave as it wills so we must study patterns to understand its next move and prepare for it. We can’t just grumble when the weather is changing; we must study it and prepare for it. We can’t be just be sad when cancer cells grow, we must study it and learn it’s behaviour and what makes the human body a fertile ground for it. We can’t choose only sadness when our hard earned money evaporates, we must learn why and create systems that ensures it never happens again. We can’t just vent when rape happens, we must understand why and ensure it never happens again.

Every tough time should motivate us to work towards the end of the toughness of its kind. When we elect bad leaders, we must not just feel disappointed alone, we must understand how we made those choices and what to do better. The fortune in tough times is the opportunity to ensure we end it for good.

Here are a few steps to winning in tough times:

Feel the Pain 

It’s a bad idea to deny the pain that comes with tough times. We have to allow ourselves feel the pain. If used correctly, the pain, as hard as it is, will remind us that we have a noble duty to end this kind of pain for us and others. If you have been imprisoned wrongly, the pain will give you a new purpose to ensure no one experiences what you have experienced. The pain can be a guide if used correctly. 

Talk to Professionals and Kind People 

It’s important that we speak to people as we feel the pain, and not allow the pain overwhelm us before seeking help. We need to define and describe the pain we feel to remind us to end this sort of evil or unfortunate event for us and others. As we speak to professionals, it’s also important to speak to kind-hearted friends who can be our rock and a shoulder in the moment. Kind people will never blame you in secret or openly. They will simply be kind. 

Let Purpose Heal You 

As we ask ourselves why we had to experience this, we need to go ahead to give our experience a purpose. We get broke so we can learn how not to go broke again. This is the meaning we can choose to give an occurrence. When the events are really fatal, we may feel the cost is too much. We may feel life made us pay a very big price for an unworthy purpose. We may be right, however, we cannot change what has happened but we can make the lessons from the very expensive pain and use it to make the world a better place. Losing a loved one can teach us to value those alive and make the best of every moment. It can inspire us to fund research to cures for all manner of diseases. It can inspire us to lead a safer society. The cost may be high but the cost of not learning is heavier. As we give the event a meaningful purpose, we will find healing slowly but surely.  

Share your Learnings 

It’s important that we make our lives better but it’s even more meaningful to make the lives of others better. Finding the cure to a terminal disease cannot be for our family alone. It’s for the world. Learning better ways to save and invest cannot be for us alone. It’s for the world. Learning how to make marriage and relationships work cannot be for us alone. Finding out how to live longer cannot be for us alone. As we discover rich lessons in tough times, we have a duty to share with the world via articles, books, products or services. Our new found purpose can become our economic breakthrough or our personal social responsibility, whichever one it is, the goal is to share and make the world a better place. It’s a duty. 

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