When experiencing adversity, you can easily become distracted with minor setbacks and disappointments. These can quickly add up and become overwhelming. It's important to differentiate between minor inconveniences or disappointment and real obstacles to achieving your goals. For example, losing your ride to school and having to take the bus is an inconvenience; losing your job and no longer being able to afford classes is a major obstacle to graduating college. Defining problems and understanding which is most pressing will help you develop an effective plan of attack. While some may experience more than others, everyone will suffer setbacks and periods of difficulty. By accepting adversity as a normal part of life that happens to everyone, you'll waste less time feeling stuck and helpless. Accepting adversity doesn't mean you won't feel sad and frustrated by setbacks. Give yourself permission to feel negative emotions, but try setting a time limit on how long you can dwell on them. For example, schedule 30 minutes to cry and feel in your pain. When time is up, divert your attention to completing a task. This probably isn't the first time you've experienced setbacks, which is compelling evidence you're capable of overcoming adversity. You have survived every hardship you've experienced to date. You have always found the necessary strength to overcome in the past, so there is no reason to think you won't be able to do the same this time.  Try making a list of past experiences of adversity and success to see that your resilience is pretty impressive. If you want to overcome adversity, then you have to focus on the positive, whether it means the positive aspects of your situation, or the positive results you'll feel if you achieve what you want in the future. Make a list of all of the good things in your life, or all of the good things you may have to look forward to, and you'll see that there's more to be happy about than you think. If you are struggling to see the positive in your own situation, look for inspiration in others' stories. Don't look at your mistakes as failures. Instead, understand and acknowledge when you've done something wrong and identify what you have learned from the situation and what you will do differently the next time around. If you are struggling to find opportunities to learn, try telling someone else the story of what happened and ask him or her to pick out lessons to take away. Tell the story in the third person to increase the objectivity of the listener. Learn what you can from the past and quickly shift to applying those lessons to the future. The past cannot be changed, so lingering on it may contribute to feelings of hopelessness. The future, however, represents possibility.  To help shift your focus to the future, understand a difficult past can make a successful future even more rewarding, so overcoming adversity becomes a future goal.
حدِّدْ مشاكلك ورتب أولوياتك. تقبَّل حتمية وقوع الشدائد. آمن بنفسك. انظر للجانب الإيجابي. انظر لأخطائك على أنها فرص للتعلم. ركز على المستقبل.