Tough Times

None of us are immune to tough times. We all experience challenges. Some seem to come out of nowhere and others arrive on the heels of other challenges, forcing us to wonder when life is going to give us a break. It’s easy to view these periods of our lives through the eyes of a victim, bemoaning the situation, blaming others, or wallowing in gloom. However, The Kabbalah Centre teaches that the difficult times we may find ourselves in are never random. Situations that seem negative are actually lessons placed on our path giving us the opportunity to transform.

According to Karen Berg, “Any challenge you encounter in life is part of a design whose intent is to help you grow and change. The more arduous the difficulty, the greater the opportunity it affords you to mend your ways in order to connect to the Light. This is true even of the worst situations.”

Change isn’t always graceful or pretty. Though, there are actions we can take to make the road a little less rocky. Start by accepting that we cannot control the events that occur around us. But we can control our responses to those events and how we interact with the people involved. When we move through life on autopilot, we sometimes react to things without taking the time to figure out how we feel, what we really think, or what would be the best course of action. Reactivity always makes a difficult situation worse. We have all said or done things that we regretted later.

When things don’t go as expected, stay calm and give yourself some time to respond with intention. This may even mean removing yourself from the situation in order to gain clarity. When we’re in the middle of a crisis it’s hard to listen to your intuition or see which way the Light is guiding you. This is especially true when there are many people around you offering advice or reacting to their own experience. Give yourself time to pause and think before you act.

When we remember that there is a lesson waiting for us in every negative encounter, we can more easily shift our perspectives toward seeing the positive. Though the Creator’s intention may not always be clear initially, trust that each challenge you face in life is meant for you. What may seem like a wrong turn is actually a sign that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

In his book, Becoming Like God, Michael Berg elaborates,

“The journey to God is an ejection seat from the comfort zone. If the signpost reads DISCOMFORT, we know we’re on the right road. When we go against our human nature, we’re on the right road. When someone bruises our ego and instead of walking out indignantly as is customary, we stay and study the pain, we welcome the bruising, and we feel gratitude to the insulters, to those who’ve given us this opportunity to bring more Light and less comfort into our lives, then we’re on the right road.”

While we seldom invite difficulty and pain into our lives, it’s important to remember that the challenges offer us the opportunity to grow and transform. So, when we find ourselves in the thick of a negative experience, it helps to keep in mind that no matter how difficult your situation, every road comes to an end eventually. Ultimately, life is not about what has happened to you, it's about how you have worked through the events in your life and come out stronger in the end.