In order to write about life first, you must live it.
Ernest Hemingway
Everyone wants a free, happy, easy and carefree life. We all want to win, have great friends in our corner, make money, be famous, and the list goes on and on.
Everyone would love that – it’s easy to bask in that euphoria.
I am here typing in the middle of the night. On one hand, my observing mind is in tune with the words I type. However, on the other hand, my thinking mind is worried about my not so good solutions to a test I had yesterday, about travelling to your mind to speak of the words you truly desire to hear.
Life imposes on you things that you can’t control, but you still have the choice of how you are going to live through it.
Ernest Hemingway is right on all sides, you must have truly lived life to be able to write about it. When you ask people, what is life? There is an invisible dichotomy between their responses and life experiences.
Merriam Webster defines life as ‘the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body’.
Dealing with what life throws at you is all about building strength to face life itself. Our minds process situations first before dishing out results to the body for a response.
All it takes in the ballgame of life is to align with your reality. Life is ten percent what happens to you, and ninety percent how you respond to it.
Is life happening to you or for you?
Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. If life were predictable, it would cease to be life, and be without flavour.
I know that if we all had the power to decide, we will write a beautiful story about how our lives should play out, we will blot out the low days, ugly scenarios, disappointments, failure, helplessness and every ounce of negativity.
Everyone wants a beautiful life plated in gold. But, no one wants to walk through the fire, we don’t fancy the hard work and the grind- the delayed gratification. We all want it here and now. Moments when life does not play out as glossy as we have made it up in our heads, we tend to throw in the towel. We ask always, “why me?” Why not you?
Read: How to Deal with Rejection
If you want the rainbow, you have to put up with the rain.
Dolly Parton
Resilience is our ability to adapt and cope with difficult things that happen in life. However, resilience is something that we also can all build and nurture within ourselves and can increase our ability to cope when life throws challenges our way.
It should be understood that life comes in stages; the better the realisation, the easier it is to wing through it.
Stages of Life
1. Mimicry
We are born helpless. We got through this stage by walking in the steps of the embellished acts in our minds. We learnt to feed, talk, walk because of what we see. We went from physical skills to social skills to societal conformation.
2. Self Awareness
This is the stage where we learn what makes us different from the people and culture around us. We begin to make decisions, we test ourselves, we experiment.
The Greek aphorism, “know thyself” comes into full play. This stage will help groom you to deal with life better. You will ace some things but you are just going to be bad at some things, no matter how hard you try, and you need to realise what they are.
3. Commitment
This is the stage you learn to maximize your potential. You have identified with a forte, double on it and ace through it.
4. Legacy
Life is only meant to be lived once. If you live it right; once is more than enough. Legacy is the stage you arrive at after exerting energy on meaningful things. You sit back and dole out experiences. Legacy is what lives after you.
Dealing with Life
Life will not always come on a platter of gold or bed of roses, it’s a rollercoaster. There will be ups and downs. The only thing that helps you navigate is control over your emotions. You need to learn to work through them.
There’s no gain in beating yourself up about mistakes, or having a bad day, or failing. Let failures be your fuel.
Be kind to yourself, take control of your emotions, ask for support when you need it, unwind, feel your emotions. It’s okay to cry; you are allowed to feel however and it’s absolutely good to let those emotions out!
Life comes with no rosy promises. Take each day as it comes; make the most out of it. Learn to trust your coping mechanism, take control of your mind, look after yourself, focus on the here and now.
If you ever feel anxious, I hope you let yourself feel it, but do not identify with it. Win through life, let it happen for you and not to you. Do not sink in murky deep worrisome emotions, expect twists and turn.
You might have heard always, “These are the most important years of your life”. You keyed into it and when you fail or meet a loophole while at it, you begin to wonder if life was over for you.
You can either get bitter or better. The choice does not belong to fate, it belongs to you.
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Conclusion
Every day will not be good, you might not pass that exam at first sitting, you might take a while before becoming a pro, you might lose dear loved ones when you least expect it.
In all down moments, do not feel like you are the only one or the world is crashing down upon you. Understand that there is always something good about every day. Notice these things and celebrate them. Train your mind to see what’s right. Positivity is a choice.
When life throws lemons at you, make tall jars of lemonade out of it. One day you will tell your story of how you have overcome what you are going through now and it will become part of someone’s survival guide.
Teens Meet Outreach 