We all wish to live a shiny, wonderful life full of happiness and good times, but the older we get, we realize the difficult fact that that’s not how life is. You will go through shitty things in life. You will lose friends, lovers, money and jobs. You will lose things you took for granted and you will not get certain things no matter how badly you want them.
Simply put: “Life isn’t a walk in the park, at some point you will step in shit!” You might feel bad about this, but you shouldn’t, because hard times are good for you in many ways…
1. You are stronger
Strength is one of the most important qualities you gain in life. We acquire strength from passing through problems and down times – that’s just the way it is for us human beings living on planet earth. Unfortunately, there’s no other way!
Now, you have more courage to stand up to your troubles and deal with them like an adult. You are not as afraid as before and that broken heart of yours will amaze you with how fast it recovers and goes back to pumping strength. You dare more and are now more ready than ever to go through whatever life holds – good and bad.
2. You know better
You’ve read life advice and relationship advice and career advice a million times before, but you will never understand it unless you experience it firsthand. You know a lot better about many things now, but do you know what the thing is that you know best about now? YOU!
You know where you went wrong, when you should’ve reacted differently, you know more about your points of strength and, more importantly, about your points of weakness.
And one of the very important things that you know more about now is your friends. I’m talking about your real friends – you knew who some of them were and others you didn’t. You thought some of your friends would always be on your side and have your back. Unfortunately, you will be wrong about a couple of them and it’s going to hurt like a motherfucker!
But that’s okay, because – believe it or not – you will eventually move on and that’s good, because now you have more time and appreciation for those who truly love you and will do anything to help you. You aren’t going to waste your time anymore with assholes who don’t appreciate you enough.
3. You are wiser
They say wisdom comes with age – and I respectfully disagree because I believe wisdom comes from experiences, good and bad. Now you know that life is never a straight line up or a rocking decline down; it’s a mix of both. And you know for sure that – one way or another – things will get better and you are not going to be stuck down there forever.
You have enough wisdom to see the shit that’s coming your way and know how to avoid it. You learn what I believe is the most important lesson: “Change is the only constant thing in life”
4. You are smarter
Life is just like a science experiment or a new invention. You get better at it by trial and error. The more we learn, the more we know and the smarter we get. We don’t learn much when everything is good and going our way. We learn more when the shit hits the fan (at least it works that way for me)!
You make a bad decision and shit happens. So what will you do next time? You will take a smarter decision… Right?
5. You are more grateful
It’s in the structure of human beings to know the real worth of something when we completely lose it. But you know better now, don’t you? I believe gratitude is probably the most important thing we learn here. Many of us don’t realize how lucky we are until we go through hard times.
And when a particular rough patch has ended and some time has passed, we can look at the bigger picture and see for ourselves the true value of the things we under – or over – appreciated.
WE SAID THIS: Don’t miss “10 Life-Changing Things I’ve Learned In My 20s… So Far!“