6 Steps You Can Take Now to Manage Stress and Overcome Difficulties

By Karen Bresnahan | Purpose Fairy

“When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.” ~ Saint Francis de Sales

We all struggle with change, stress, and difficulties in life. Things happen unexpectedly every day in both job situations and personal lives. Yet, what matters most is how a person reacts to change.

Some people seem to be better than others at dealing with life’s inevitable changes and all the unexpected things that happen. They seem to have the knowledge, experience, and mental power to manage stress and overcome difficulties.

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Here are 6 steps you can take to help improve your ability to deal with life’s inevitable changes, manage stress and overcome difficulties:

1. Change your thoughts. 

Any situation can be looked at from a positive or negative perspective. One person may feel threatened by what someone says, while another person seems unaffected. One person may be devastated by a job loss, while another sees it as a chance to do something new. It all depends on your attitude. Every situation you find yourself in can be perceived in a bad way or good way. This means what you decide what it means to you.

One way of learning to handle stress and overcome difficulties is to avoid negative thinking about any situation or any person. Gravitate toward the positive. This means you make a decision to keep positive thoughts in your mind and let go of any negative ideas. Look at the bright side. Use affirmations to remind yourself to keep thinking positive. This will help you overcome your difficulties and build up your inner power. Mental discipline is something that everyone is capable of, but it must be practiced.

2. Turn away from fear and conflict. 

We all make choices every day that either relates to fear or to love. Often our fears are something that causes us to create or become involved in a conflict, so to avoid conflict, you must do the opposite. You must let go of the fears in your mind and stay away from conflict. This can be done by choosing a path of love, instead of fear, and keeping your focus on peace, instead of conflict.

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Just knowing that you truly desire peace will help you focus on better things.  If you follow your fears, you will undoubtedly find yourself mixed up in conflict, but if you choose to look at everything with love, your whole perspective will change and you will manifest more good in your life.

3. Learn to live in alignment with your purpose. 

We all search for ways to live better and happier lives. Finding your purpose is important. It is a very personal and individual thing and requires some soul searching.  People practice mindfulness so they can be in touch with their feelings, live in the present moment, and find happiness in life.

Being mindful of your life’s purpose comes from self-awareness and ultimately leads you on a path of inner peace.

Becoming associated with a type of spiritual practice or religion can help you feel that your life has a purpose and you are connected to others.  Those who define their life purpose as being loving and helpful toward others are more likely to avoid conflict and have a reduced amount of fear, and less stress in their daily lives.

We all are searching for calmness in a world that can often seem chaotic. Some of the most popular ways to reduce daily stress with relaxation and calmness are through practices like massage, meditation, and yoga, or visiting spiritual practitioners.  Many people create areas of their home for relaxation and meditation. Spending quiet time is a way to increase your self-awareness, improve your ability to focus on your goals and something that can help your mental clarity.

4. Identify your strengths.

We all have natural talents that we are born with. Everyone is good at something. There are many talented athletes, musicians, and actors, and brilliant professors, scientists, leaders, and achievers in every profession. Inner strength is about knowing yourself and your abilities. Take time to think about and analyze what your natural strengths and talents are. Maybe you are good at communicating and building social relationships. Or, you could be very knowledgeable about computers and better at working independently. Perhaps you have rare musical talent or artistic abilities.

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Just recognizing your own personal strengths will help you to explore your abilities and discover what you are passionate about.  Many people believe in “doing what you are good at”, in order to be happy at what you do. The sooner in life, you can recognize your own talents, the more successful you are probably going to be at developing them and making your dreams become reality.

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