Getting Through Tough Times: A Strong Mind And Habits

Life is full of difficult situations, that is just a fact of life! Inevitably, each one of us will go through tough times that can lead to increased stress and anxiety. This stress and anxiety can lead to a multitude of different health issues that last well after the tough times are over. So how do you prepare or combat the effects of these trying times?

Each one of these tough times will have a different impact on your life, and having a strong mind and habits can help you make your way through it. From developing a good support system to maintaining a self-care routine to practicing mindfulness techniques, one has a wide range of options close at hand.

So whether you're going through tough times now or just preparing yourself to be able to handle those tough times as they arise, building a strong mind and good habits could be the ticket to protecting your mental, spiritual, and physical health.

That's why, in this quick article, we're going to go over some of these routines and habits you can build into your everyday life to help protect you from the negative consequences that often come with tough times.

Tough Times: What Causes Them?

Tough times are inevitable as you work your way through life. What constitutes a tough time though is a very personal thing. In the end, what causes tough times is any situation that puts an individual outside of their comfort zone or in emotional or mental turmoil.

One of the chief things that are responsible for many individuals' tough times is financial difficulties. Not being able to afford the things you need or being in a state of constant worry about losing things that are vital to living a comfortable life can cause very trying times.

Another big factor when it comes to tough times is health issues. When serious health issues are introduced into one's life, it can cause a snowball effect and really impact the quality of life they have. Both of these factors are maybe the most often attributed to being the causes of tough times.

Looking at these two, as well as other individuals' definitions, you can distill the core factor of tough times into unexpected or unwanted changes in one's life. This change disrupts one's life and that can cause turmoil, stress, and anxiety.

Mental Habits That Can Help

When it comes to dealing with tough times, one of the best things you can do is to focus on building your mental strength. This is because tough times often put the most strain on your emotional and mental health.

Of course, as we said above can snowball into a whole wealth of different health issues. So here are some mental habits that can help you navigate through any type of difficult situation or time:

Express Yourself

There will be a lot of emotions and thoughts that go through your mind as you're navigating the difficult situation you're in. Keeping your feelings and emotions to yourself can only exacerbate the situation.

So one of the best habits you can use not only to help you through tough times but simply to help you through your life, in general, is to be open and honest with your feelings. This doesn't mean being mean or aggressive, it simply means stating how you feel in the moment so that you can address the situation.

By addressing the situation and these emotions, you can reduce the chance of anxiety and stress building into something more serious. You can build this skill even before you're in those tough times, and you might also find that it helps build more cohesive relationships.

Control What You Can Control

Stress and anxiety often build up because you are focusing on things that you absolutely have no control over. When you're in these tough times, the only thing you have that you can control is what you can focus on.

Instead of looking at why this tough time happened or what's going to happen in the future, staying in the present will allow you to control the situation better. You actually might find this quite difficult, as many of us do.

So for us, the best suggestion is to create a list of things that you have control over and things that you don't. Then your mind can focus on the things you can control, and this may help you actually work yourself out of tough times much quicker and in a healthier way.

Perspective Change

Tying in with the previous suggestion, one of the things you can control is how you look at the situation. It may be difficult to do in some situations, but looking at your tough times from a different viewpoint may help you navigate them more effectively.

Instead of looking at it as a negative, try to see the positive aspects that could come from these tough times. This is definitely as we said going to be challenging, especially in some situations. But looking at what you can learn from it can remove the negativity and therefore help you maintain your health and sanity better.

By changing your perspective, you can regain some of the control that often you feel you lose during these tough situations. The positive outlook on this situation could also allow you to see the bigger picture.

Support System

Many struggle with reaching out for help when it comes to tough times. But one of the best ways to help through these situations is to have a support system you can reach out to. This means cultivating friendships and relationships with individuals that truly care about your well-being.

We say friendships and relationships because building a support system isn't only about having people close to you that will comfort you. Another vital part of having a support system is having access to resources and individuals that can help you through these tough times.

Building a support system that encompasses both of these aspects will allow you to have access to individuals that can guide you through the tough times and comfort you as well.

Positivity

It may seem like one of the most difficult tasks possible, but by staying positive even in the toughest situations, you can really affect your mental state. The truth is, you can either choose to dwell on all the negative aspects of what's going on or look for the positive things that could comfort you or are currently in your life.

Moving your mind away from the tough times and focusing on the things that you have in your life that you are grateful for allows for that positivity to infect your whole body. It can also help you stay in a good mindset so that you can be more clear when it comes to forming a plan to remove yourself from these tough times.

Of course, we understand that sometimes negativity is going to creep in. That is a human quality, however by acknowledging that you have that negative thought, addressing it, and moving on to a more positive thought you'll be training your brain to find the good in everything.

Creativity

One of the best ways to navigate tough times is to take your mind off the situation as best you can. There are many different ways to do this, but maybe one of the best is to get a little creative. Taking time out can clear your mind and make it easier to find a solution and way to get out of your tough times.

Time to be creative can also allow your mind to become more creative with solutions two your tough times. Having that break in your life can really change your mental state and help reduce your stress and anxiety.

What the creativity is that you choose to do is up to you. Some people love to take out their paints and do a little painting, while others like to sit down and just begin writing. Whatever creative outlet you use, we are sure that for that moment in time your mind will be focused on the task at hand.

Physical Habits That Can Help

Addressing the mental aspect of habits is vitally important, as your mind controls a lot of different things. But along with the mental, there are physical habits that you can incorporate into your lives to prepare yourself to better handle tough times that may occur.

Here are some of the ways we think that you can build mental strength and habits that can help you in your everyday life as well as during those tough times:

Physiology Changes

It might seem like a simple thing, but when looking at trying to work your way through tough times, putting a smile on your face could be just the thing the doctor ordered. Sometimes, the way our bodies move can affect our overall feelings.

There have been many studies that prove that smiling just makes us happier. It's because this motion in our face often triggers a response from our brain to release feel-good hormones. Another great idea is to do a power pose.

When your body is moving or standing in different positions, you can activate parts of your brain that elevate your mood. Any elevation in mood draws you away from the negative aspects of the situation.

Self-Care Routine

Often, when you are in the midst of tough times, you forget to do the things that make you feel good. Self-care routines and having a habit of them can help us keep from being burnt out physically, emotionally, and spiritually during these difficult situations.

Building a self-care routine that becomes a habit will be more beneficial and easier to maintain during these difficult times. By taking care of yourself, you're not only taking care of your physical body, but the entire whole of your being.

These self-care routines are individual and can include exercise which is great for relieving stress which you will have tons of during tough times. This is like meditation and journaling. All of these, when built into your everyday routine, can allow you to navigate the ins and outs of difficult situations easier.

Change Your Routine Up

Though we think a self-care routine is vitally important, another great way to build mental strength and habits is to change your routine up a little bit. Sometimes even when we're in tough situations we find ourselves in a rut.

Changing your routine up by changing your location or doing something that you don't typically do can revitalize your energy. On top of this, changing up your routine a little might also allow you to see things from a different point of view.

That different point of view might be able to guide your mind into creating a solution to your problem that you may not have thought of without shaking things up. So changing things up every now and then is not a bad thing.

Get Sleep

A simple habit to build is a good sleep routine. Sleep is vitally important to be able to mentally and physically handle anything that is thrown at you. With the lack of sleep, you're unable to think things through and your emotions are negatively impacted.

Adding the negative impacts of having a poor sleep habit can only add to the stress and anxiety brought on by the difficult situation. On top of this lack of sleep also affects your physical health and the last thing you need is to have to deal with an illness while trying to deal with a difficult situation.

Ensuring you have a good nighttime routine that lulls you into a deep sleep is vitally important. For us, this means disconnecting and really concentrating on relaxing into sleep.

Good Diet

During tough times sometimes the one thing that falls to the wayside is your diet. But if you're able to build healthy habits before these situations you may be able to maintain your health in this aspect.

Food like sleep is vitally important to the functioning of your body and your brain. So ensuring that you do not stress, eating and staying focused on eating well will allow you to have a clearer mind to help yourself through these tough times.

This means that you need to concentrate on feeding your body with the right foods in order to fuel it. Ensuring that you have enough energy and the proper nutrients will allow you to maintain a healthy immune system as well as ensure a better mental capability of handling these trying times.

Spiritual Habits That Can Help

One aspect that many people overlook when they're thinking of ways to build these amazing habits and mental strength to bolster themselves during tough times is the spiritual aspect. Having spiritual habits can help you build mental strength and give you an outlet to handle the stress and anxiety that comes with difficult times.

Here are some of the best spiritual habits that you can instill in your daily life that will inevitably help you through tough times:

Meditate

Meditation is a key practice in many different spiritual beliefs for a reason. No matter what type of meditation you opt to use, the end result is the same. Meditation is a tool that you can use to allow you to stay present in the moment and be able to address issues more effectively.

By installing a meditative practice into your daily life, you're ensuring that even during the toughest times you have an outlet that allows you to calm your mind and focus better. Along with this, most meditation includes breathwork, and that in and of itself will help you with your physical and mental well-being.

The core principles of breathwork which bring more oxygen into your body as well as allow you to stay present in the moment and the ability to acknowledge your feelings and thoughts will allow you to reduce the stress and anxiety that are brought on by difficult situations.

Gratitude

When you're in the midst of a difficult situation, it’s very difficult to see the things in your life that are good. But if you've already built a gratitude habit into your daily life, then it might be a little simpler.

There are many ways that you can practice gratitude, and the choice of these is really up to your comfort level and what works for you. One of the best ways though is to add gratitude into a journaling practice every morning. Focusing on what you're grateful for in the morning may set your day up to be better.

Having gratitude while amid a difficult situation may allow you to not be as focused on the negative aspects. Not being focused on the negative aspects may help guide you to a solution to the problem quicker. Or at the very least be able to help you handle the emotional and mental taxation that comes with tough times.

Kindness

You get back what you put out into the world is a very common philosophy that many people subscribe to. By instilling kindness into your everyday life, you may find that you have a better support system available to you and a more positive outlook on life.

Kindness truly is some of the best medicine you can have. Being kind to not only others, but yourself, is vitally important to maintaining a healthy mental health. With a healthy mental health, you'll be able to handle difficult situations better.

Kindness to others can be as simple as reaching out to a friend and really listening to their problems. But maybe the most important form of kindness, though being kind to others is very important, is kindness to yourself. Understanding that there are things that are out of your control and being open to understanding that can help you navigate difficult situations.

Find Your Path

Having a healthy spiritual or religious belief can also help you navigate stressful situations. What this looks like is really an individual thing, but forming some sort of belief system can help you work your way through negative situations.

Having a firm belief can give you guidance on how to navigate situations. It can also help you find ways to deal with the stress and anxiety that has been brought on by the situation. Finding your path not only has to do with having some sort of belief, but also guiding you through your life.

Being sure of what you believe and the path that you walk can remove some of the more extensive uncertainties that come with difficult situations. So, finding a path that works for you could eventually help you navigate your way out of any type of tough times.

Tips to Help Build Mental Strength and Form Good Habits

So now that you have a few ideas of some habits and routines you can put into your daily life to help build mental strength and build good habits, we want to give you some tips on how you can build those. There are many different ways, but these are some of the ones that we think work the best:

• One of the best ways to build mental strength is through the challenges that come up in your life. Assessing these challenges objectively will allow you to really see what the situation is. In other words, in your everyday life practice looking at situations that bring you stress and anxiety, whether it is a slight inconvenience or a true issue.

• When you're trying to build habits, one of the best things to do is to write your goals down. This can be a list of negative habits that you want to get rid of or positive ones that you want to build. When you do this, we highly suggest you place them on notes that you can put someplace that's easily accessible to see. This hopefully will be a reminder of the habits that you're trying to build and help prompt you to begin executing the actions in order to build that habit.

• Start out small because if you try to go too big it may be hard to build that habit. Make small adjustments to daily life in order to build towards that ultimate larger habit. As you do this, it'll become easier for you to manage them, and you'll feel more accomplished when you do.

• When looking to build mental strength, one of the best things is to know your triggers and to be able to avoid them. Avoiding the things that could potentially cause problems might be a problem in and of itself. This is not one of the tips that would be used for those who have an avoidance issue or procrastination. Taking the time to really move towards this situation could help reduce the anxiety that comes when being presented with it.

Final Thoughts

We wish we could say that tough times were not something that you would ever go through. However, that's unrealistic and at some point in all of our lives, there will be a moment or moments where we enter into tough times.

Whether that's because of financial strain or health concerns, there are many habits that you can put into your daily life that will help navigate you through them. Having a strong mental capacity and a life filled with good habits can help you reduce the anxiety and stress that comes from them.

By no means will these negate the tough times, but they're tools that you can utilize to help guide you through them. These habits and routines can help you find your path toward a happier and healthier life.

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