Cultivating Happiness For
Times of Hardship
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
~Unknown
We all experience events that cause deep pain or hardship. During these times, our energy is contracted, scattered, negative, and our thoughts are out of control and paralyzing. We feel the pain at a visceral level in our minds, in our hearts, and in our bodies. Though we can’t change the outer event, we can choose how we respond, thereby changing our experience of it.
Are you feeling:
- Saddened by news that has had an effect on your ability to function?
- Caught unaware by a new situation and unprepared for the circumstance?
- Confused and at a loss as to what action to take next?
- Devastated by a catastrophe?
- Depleted emotionally and physically?
- Worried to distraction over an issue or issues?
- Empty having lost a loved one?
- Overwhelmed by despair, fear, and lack of control?
No matter how horrible or seemingly inescapable our hardship, we always have a choice–not whether we endure but how we endure.
Cultivating happiness may seem impossible when threatened with the loss, illness, or the pain we or a loved one may be suffering. Yet, using the strategies for cultivating happiness is the single best and most empowering thing that we can do for ourselves and those we love when faced with a hardship.
As you practice cultivating happiness from within, you learn the art of coping in a healthy way. Through mindfulness, learned optimism, and purpose, you will learn to find meaning in the pain, which will shift your energy and strengthen your ability, resolve, and resourcefulness to navigate what has befallen you.
Through Our Work You Can Achieve:
- Inspired Goals: Harness the mindset to brave adversity with acceptance and peace. Unleash inner strengths to overcome difficulty and sustain growth through spirituality
- Ideal Self: Discover and articulate a clear image of how you want to brave the adversity, and take the steps to embody that vision, beginning now.
- Mindful Action: Determine and establish the steps necessary to develop the mindset and behaviors that you can employ day to day to feel empowered over the challenges of hardship.
- Energy: Observe what is depleting you and discover and employ generative rituals that will preserve and fuel your energy.
- A Sense of Control: Learn to differentiate those things that are within your control and those things that are not, and focus valuable energy on what you can control.
- Equanimity: Use mindfulness to reduce stress, broaden perspective, gain clarity, find gratitude–all of which will enable you to show up for yourself or loved ones more powerfully.
- Purpose: Summon spiritual principles to find meaning, connection, compassion and fortitude.
- Joy: Learn to remain open to moments of joy that are always available to you, even in dark times.
You have the power to cultivate happiness during times of hardship, and to shift your energy and your perspective to find the meaning behind the pain, and use that meaning as the keystone for strength, action, and joy.
