How to Stay Positive When Life Gets Ugly

Even if you are the most positive person in the world, it is challenging to stay positive when life gets ugly.

Sometimes, life can hit with a brick on your head and problems can seem overwhelming.

However, that doesn’t mean that you should give up or succumb to what life is throwing at you.

Take it as a test that builds your character.

Like what Les Brown, the motivational speaker has to say,

“Don’t say that you’re having a bad day.

Say that you’re having a character-building day.”

If you study the life and encounters of extraordinary people, you will understand that life can be tough and things can seem bleak.

But somehow, these extraordinary people seem to be able to make it through.

Remember, you always have a choice.

You can choose to look at things from a positive side or the negative side.

The choice is yours.

And because you have a choice and you can make the call, you can still maintain positive even when life gets ugly.

Like what Henry Ford famously said, “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you are right.”

So choose to see your situation in a positive manner, look at your problems as opportunities, and treat tough times as a chance to grow your characters.

How to stay positive when life gets hard

Here are 5 tips on how to stay positive when life gets hard.

1. Understand that everything is just your perceptions

First, you need to understand that whatever happens to you, there is no good or bad, they are just circumstances.

It is your perceptions that make the situation negative.

For example, most people hate failures and they treat failures as something bad.

But in the eye of Thomas Edison, failures were good.

Failures were the feedback that told Edison where he should improve.

This was why when he was asked about his 10,000 failures, he said, “I have not failed.

I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Thus, everything is neutral.

There is no good news or bad news.

It is your thinking that makes it so.

Understand this principle and you can turn everything bad in your life into something positive.

Remember, success usually comes from good judgment.

Good judgment usually comes from experience.

And experience usually comes from bad judgment.

Look at things from a brighter side.

2. Remember the dream

The next thing you can do is to always remember your dream.

When life gets ugly, it is even more important that you remember your dream so that you will never lose your focus.

Most people fail to achieve the success they want in life because they often get distracted by the things that are happening around them.

They lose themselves when things are not going their way.

If you want to stay positive, make sure you keep your dreams in your mind all the time.

There is a saying, “You become what you think about most of the time.”

Guess what will happen if you constantly think about the problems, the failure, and the negative situations that you are in?

You end up becoming negative.

Hence, maintain your positive by regularly reminding yourself about your dreams and goals.

For they can act like a lighthouse that show you the direction when you are in the dark.

3. Focus on the lessons

Successful people look at setbacks and failures as lessons, not problems.

When life gets hard, you need to treat it as a character-building day.

Look at tough times as training lessons that can grow you and take you to the next level.

When he was 30, he was fired from the company that he started.

Steve Jobs felt that he was publicly out and his entire life was gone.

But when he looked back at the event that he was fired from Apple during his commencement speech at Stanford University, he said that being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to him.

After Jobs has been fired, he gained a new perspective and able to start as a new beginner again.

“The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again,” was what he said.

So welcome frustrations, setbacks, problems, and failures.

These are the things that can grow you to become someone worthy of success.

Without going through the tough times in life, you will never grow and you will never be successful.

Therefore, learn to focus on the lessons that life is trying to teach you.

When you look at your circumstances in this manner, life becomes a great teacher that pushes you forward, not dragging you down.

4. Rediscover your purpose and reignite your passion

One of the best things you can do to stay positive when life gets ugly is to rediscover your purpose and reignite your passion.

You have to understand that what gets you started is your purpose and what gets you going is your passion.

Study the success stories of extraordinary people like Richard Branson, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Michael Jordan, etc., you will discover that they started with a purpose and they back their purpose with their passion.

So why do you want to achieve what you desire?

Imagine going through life without a clear purpose, what will you do?

Anything.

It is just like shooting an arrow without knowing where the target is.

You will hit nowhere.

This is why you must constantly remind yourself of your purpose.

Besides, let your passion drives your actions.

Try to align your passion with your purpose.

Without passion, you will give up as soon as you hit a roadblock.

Steve Jobs got it right by saying, “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

There is no way you can perform at your best if you don’t like what you do.

And when times get tough, it is your passion that will get you going because you love to do it and you are willing to do it even when it is tough.

5. Bounce back with action

Finally, you must get ready to bounce back by taking massive action.

People stuck in a tough situation because they are either doing the wrong thing or they don’t do anything at all.

If you want to get out of a rut, you must move and make progress.

Staying stagnant is not going to help change the situation at all.

People don’t get drown by falling into the water.

People get drown because they stay there.

If you want to get out of a tough situation, get moving.

Don’t just stop there.

What you can do then is to come up with a new plan of action.

Write down everything that you can do to turn the situation around, and then just do it.

I love this quote from Larry Winget:“Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid.

Those things are what happen when you don’t have a plan.”

Thus, create a plan to get to the higher ground.

Your plan is the guiding light that shows you how to get out of tough times.

But whether you choose to follow your plan or not is up to you.

Of course, choose to bounce back by taking actions.

Don’t just sit there and wait for things to happen.

After all, life may not be always perfect, but it is always what you make of it.