Confidence that within every struggle, challenge, obstacle and failure there are important lessons to be learned.
What It Means Have Confidence That Within Every Struggle, Challenge, Obstacle, And Failure There Are Important Lessons To Be Learned
When you feel confidence that within every struggle, challenge, obstacle, and failure there are important lessons to be learned, you understand the true value at the heart of every hardship.
While struggling and failing aren’t exactly pleasant human experiences, they do provide a positive outcome: You learn valuable lessons and information during the process.
Someone with this specific type of confidence doesn’t necessarily have an easier time with their hardships or face less struggle during their lives. Like anyone else, they have their own challenges to conquer, but they do it with a specific goal in mind.
These people have confidence that every hardship they face serves to teach important lessons. They know they can take that information with them into the future and the wisdom they learned helps them to navigate all future struggles and builds resilience.
Think of life as school, the absolute best education that you can get in the world, and most of that education comes from your failures, struggles, challenges and obstacles.
Difficult life experiences build the confidence needed to face future obstacles and even welcome them in anticipation of the silver linings.
5 Key Benefits Of Developing A Stronger Sense Of Confidence That Within Every Struggle, Challenge, Obstacle, And Failure There Are Important Lessons To Be Learned
There are a variety of benefits associated with developing a stronger sense of confidence that within every struggle, challenge, obstacle, and failure there are important lessons to be learned.
When you have this type of confidence you are open to struggle, obstacles and even failure and some people actually welcome them because they know that is where the most personal growth takes place.
1| People with this type of confidence tend to be a lot more positive.
Rather than harboring negative thoughts and a “woe is me” attitude when they’re facing a struggle, a person with this type of confidence is more apt to handle the situation because they know they’ll learn valuable life lessons by the end of it all.
2| People with this type of confidence are a lot more level headed and calm in the midst of a crisis situation.
While others are panicking during a crisis, someone with confidence that every struggle contains a lesson to learn is usually more level headed and calm. Despite the hardship, the confident person knows that they’ll be able to handle whatever comes their way. They also know that they’ll learn lessons that make them stronger.
3| People with this type of confidence are humble.
This type of confidence usually humbles a person. Finding the valuable lessons within a mistake you’ve made or a hardship you faced can be very challenging – especially if it means having to admit you were wrong.
When a person embraces this type of confidence, they are usually humble and willing to admit that they aren’t perfect. The idea of learning a lesson from their mistakes doesn’t embarrass or shame them; instead, they feel empowered with their newfound knowledge.
4| People with this type of confidence are more empathetic and understanding.
When you face hardships and challenges in your life, you value what those experiences can do to a person. After facing a variety of struggles and challenges of your own, you develop empathy for other people who are facing their own unique struggles and challenges.
When your confidence in finding the valuable lesson persists against feeling your own shame or embarrassment, it’s easier to extend feelings of empathy and understanding toward others.
5| People with this type of confidence are kind to themselves.
Because people with this type of confidence choose to focus on the positives they can find in the midst of a struggle, challenge, obstacle, or failure, they’re often quite kind to themselves. By shifting the focus away from wrongdoing or mistakes, they’re affording themselves a lot of kindness by instead focusing on the lessons they can learn from their mistakes to do better in the future.
Focusing on self-improvement rather than lowering their own self-esteem is a fantastic benefit of having confidence that every hardship has the potential to be a teachable moment.
15 Tips For Developing A Stronger Sense Of Confidence That Within Every Struggle, Challenge, Obstacle, And Failure There Are Important Lessons To Be Learned
It is possible to develop a sense of confidence that challenges, obstacles, failures, and struggles can lead to valuable lessons. Because developing this type of confidence requires you to face those hardships, this type of confidence can take a lot of practice to perfect.
To develop a stronger sense of confidence that you can learn lessons within your biggest challenges and struggles, consider the following strategies:
1| Get more comfortable with actually feeling and experiencing your difficult emotions.
Learning how to experience, feel, and process your emotions can be a big challenge. Nobody enjoys feeling uncomfortable and difficult emotions – in fact, many people choose to handle their emotions through an action called “repression,” which means they ignore or bury their feelings rather than taking time to process them.
Learning how to actually experience your emotions is a big step toward gaining confidence that every struggle or challenge you face can contain a valuable lesson. By tackling those emotions head-on instead of ignoring them, you give yourself a chance to actually focus on the struggle and absorb what’s happening rather than repressing everything.
2| Be patient with yourself as you learn life lessons from your struggles.
Learning life lessons from your struggles can be a challenge. Dealing with hard times is already challenging enough and learning how to pull valuable lessons from your hard times can make it feel even more difficult.
As you experience hardship and teach yourself to focus on the valuable lessons embedded within them, give yourself some grace and patience. Sometimes you may not see the important lessons until after the ordeal is finished; other times, you may realize them as the situation unfolds. Over time, you’ll become more adept at absorbing this valuable information, but until then, be kind to yourself as you learn.
3| Reach out to your support system for extra help when you need it.
Getting an outsider’s perspective on your struggles, challenges, obstacles, and failures can provide valuable insight on the important lessons you can learn. As you deal with your own hardship, it can be challenging to turn your focus toward any valuable lessons or knowledge.
Reach out to members of your support system for extra help, especially when you’re navigating a difficult challenge or obstacle. Often, your close friends and family members can help you realize or understand something about the situation you couldn’t originally see; their “outside view” of what you’re experiencing can help build your confidence that there are indeed important lessons to learn from your struggles.
4| Spend plenty of time on your self-care routine.
Self-care is an important part of keeping all types of confidence raised. When you’re trying to find the important lessons within your challenges and struggles, ensuring that you’re taking good care of yourself is a key step toward making sure you’re up for that type of challenge. When you are well, healthy, and physically strong your mental and emotional state naturally improves.
Self-care practices look different for everyone. It’s important to find activities that leave you feeling relaxed and recharged afterward. A few examples of self-care activities include….
- Taking a nap
- Getting in some exercise
- Listening to your favorite music
- Taking a hot bath or shower
- Indulging in a favorite meal or treat
- Taking time to participate in an activity or hobby you really enjoy
- ….and many more!
5| Keep a running list of important life lessons you have learned and continue to learn over time.
When you’re in the midst of a particularly tough challenge, it can be difficult to remember that your hard times can contain valuable life lessons. To help yourself in the future, keep a list of important lessons you’ve learned over time from your struggles and hardships.
You can keep a written list, journal, or digital list on your device – however you choose to document your life lessons will work just fine.
When you find yourself in the midst of a struggle and feel like you can’t possibly find anything positive to learn from the challenge, revisit your list and reflect on past lessons you’ve learned for inspiration and encouragement.
6| Find inspirational examples of people who have experienced similar challenges as you.
There is a silver lining to nearly every rough challenge or situation you’ll ever experience: Somewhere, someone else has also experienced it. Because of this, it’s easy to connect with other people who understand what you’re currently going through.
In the age of the internet, it’s easier than ever to connect with other people who understand the struggles and challenges you’re currently facing.
Reach out to online groups for support – you’ll be surprised to hear all the great lessons and wisdom others have learned from similar hardships. Hearing their experiences will boost your confidence that you can also get through the challenge and come out on the other side a bit wiser.
7| Meditate and practice mindfulness.
Meditation and mindfulness are hot in the mental health world right now, and for good reason. Meditation is an excellent way to calm yourself during periods of stress and anxiety, helping you recenter and refocus your mind back to your present reality.
Mindfulness is a similar practice. Like meditation, it helps bring you back to the present moment by helping you connect with your senses and refocus your attention back to what’s currently happening around you.
When faced with anxiety and stress, it’s easy to find yourself worrying endlessly. With mindfulness and meditation, you can refocus and build more confidence that you’ll handle your challenges accordingly.
8| Stop feeling ashamed or embarrassed whenever something doesn’t work out exactly the way you planned.
Unfortunately, life isn’t perfect. Mistakes are going to happen, and the sooner you allow yourself to let go of feelings like shame and embarrassment when you make them, the easier your life will become.
Your confidence tanks when you allow shame and embarrassment overtake you during a mistake or challenge. Rather than letting those emotions take the wheel, challenge them directly by acting against what those emotions may tempt you to do.
For example, when you feel embarrassed over a mistake, you may try to hide the evidence of making it. Instead of hiding, admit your mistake early so you can begin correcting it and learning from it.
9| Let go of perfectionism.
It’s tough to feel confident about finding wisdom within a struggle or challenge when you harbor a personal demand for perfection.
When you insist that everything always work out perfectly in your life, you’re preparing yourself for some extreme disappointment – perfection is an impossible image to attain and chasing after it endlessly stops you from learning valuable lessons from mistakes.
10| Understand that a failure isn’t the end of your journey.
Failure is hard to accept. When you work your hardest to do something and fail at it, you may feel tempted to give up on your ventures entirely. However, it’s important to restructure the way you think about failures.
To build more confidence in learning important lessons from your struggles and failures, it’s important to view failure as an important lesson all within itself. When your attempt at something fails, it doesn’t mean you need to stop trying – you’ve simply learned about a method that doesn’t work. Rethinking your failures this way boosts your confidence in the lessons you’ve learned, giving you knowledge to move forward and try again in a new way.
11| Once you identify valuable lessons learned from a struggle, challenge, obstacle, or failure give yourself permission to let the rest of that hard time go.
Retaining your valuable lessons learned from any hard time is the most important part of the entire experience. Once you have that knowledge, give yourself permission to let the rest of the experience go for good.
Sometimes people tend to ruminate too heavily on their past hardships and mistakes – they may obsess over something they did wrong, inundating themselves with “should haves” and “would haves” that they believe would have made things better.
At the end of the situation, it’s impossible to time travel back and change anything. The best and healthiest thing you can do for your confidence is to remember the lessons learned and let go of everything else that happened.
12| View your challenges, struggles, and failures as opportunities for self-improvement.
Every time you experience hardship, you learn some valuable lessons. Another way to boost your confidence in finding the valuable lessons within your hardship is to aim for self-improvement afterward.
Whatever led to the mistake, apply that wisdom to determine if you need to improve an aspect of yourself to avoid it again in the future. For example, you may determine that you made a mistake by saying something inappropriate in a meeting.
You may learn the valuable lesson of thinking carefully before speaking is the main takeaway from the whole experience. From that, you may determine that you need to improve yourself by practicing holding your tongue in important meetings.
13| Let go of any demand for control you may have.
Life would be carefree and easy if you could control everything that ever happened to you. Unfortunately, this will never be true for anyone. Nobody has total control over everything in their lives.
Allow this fact of life to help boost your confidence in yourself to find the important lessons within your struggles and hardships – you are going to face tough times.
When you face them, however, you can control one aspect of the situation and that is your attitude toward it. By approaching your challenges with a learning mindset, you can focus on taking the valuable lesson out of the struggle rather than the difficult emotions.
14| Treat yourself the same way you’d treat your best friend when they’re facing a challenging situation.
When your best friend faces a challenging time, you want to be a good, supportive friend. Rather than harping on what they did wrong or pointing out their flaws, you give them words of encouragement and attempt to help them mitigate the situation to help boost their confidence.
Give yourself the same care and concern when you’re facing your own struggles. Rather than being hard on yourself, treat yourself like your own best friend. Be kind and strive to see the positives of the situation. With this gentler approach, you’ll feel your confidence rise and find it easier to see the valuable lessons hidden within your challenges.
15| Reflect
Take the time to reflect on your past struggles so you can gain the proper perspective. Use these prompts to write out your story and see what you can glean in furtherance of building your confidence in this area of your life. Feel free to repeat the following exercise for as many situations as you like.
Describe a past struggle/obstacle/failure?
How did you respond?
What was the outcome?
What could you have done to make the outcome different?
What was missing that could have helped you?
What was positive about this experience?
What would you have done differently?
What would you have done the same?
What lessons did you learn throughout this process (think about this carefully)?
What silver linings did you discover? Think about this carefully. For example…
- Perhaps through this experience you became more comfortable with navigating roadblocks
- Perhaps you find out that you can face your fears and come out the other side
- Perhaps you gained a whole new level of inner strengthCase Study
Examining an example of a person who has confidence that every struggle, challenge, obstacle, and failure contains an important lesson can help you better understand what that type of confidence looks like. To gain a better understanding of this type of confidence, consider José.
José grew up in a poor family. As a child of poverty, he often went to school without many of the basics needed for a child to have a successful, education-filled day. José often didn’t have a nutritious breakfast, clean (or warm) clothes, school supplies, or lunch money. When the other kids all paid money to go on special field trips during the year, José’s teacher would secretly pay for his attendance fees.
As José aged into his teenage years, he began to understand more about why his family lacked financial security. His mother and father were in a considerable amount of debt. José’s father worked long hours at a minimum wage job that barely covered the bills needed for his large family’s small home to keep the electricity on and water flowing.
While José often lamented that he didn’t get to have similar experiences as the other, more economically secure kids at his high school, he used some of his struggles and hardships in poverty as valuable learning opportunities.
For example, over the years, José learned a variety of important lessons, such as….
- Taking his education seriously: If he wanted scholarships to attend college, he needed to work hard and get the best grades he possibly could.
- Working hard: A good day’s work ensured that his family would have enough money to keep their bills paid.
- Expressing gratitude: Even though his family didn’t have much, they were very grateful for what they did have.
Over time, José called upon these valuable life lessons he learned during his childhood. While it certainly wasn’t easy to be a child growing up in a poverty-level household, he maintained a positive perspective by seeing the value in what his struggles provided him: Valuable lessons he could call upon during future struggles and hardship.
As José aged past his teen years, he recalled those valuable life lessons from his youth frequently. While he found himself in a much better financial situation in his adulthood, he still remembered the lessons he learned from his childhood struggles and hardships – often, some of those lessons came in handy as an adult trying to succeed in his career field. José felt gratitude for his childhood, his adversity, and the valuable lessons he learned as a result.
The Bottom Line
Every challenge, struggle, obstacle, and failure offers a grand opportunity to learn valuable knowledge.
While going through a hard time isn’t fun, having confidence that there will be something valuable at the end of that challenge makes the experience worthwhile.
Increasing your confidence in this particular area requires a lot of practice and patience with yourself.
Learning how to approach a challenge or difficult time as a learning opportunity can be difficult because it requires hands-on practice during your most challenging moments to master. However, doing so is a valuable skill – it ensures that you will leave every negative or tough experience with valuable knowledge afterward.
