When Things Go Wrong … Awaken Your Psychological Strengths

When things go wrong, there is no use running away or taking a different path. Beyond what they have led us to believe, the difficulty must be passed through, walking with it for as long as necessary, until it dissipates and leaves us definitively. Now, it must be done actively and proactively, awakening those psychological strengths that we all have within us.

An old saying sounds to all of us that says that when things go wrong, they can go worse . It’s true. As much as it may surprise us, there is a real fact in that idea, and that is that when life gets complicated, if you do not act appropriately, other unexpected problems can lead to due to passivity or wrong coping. .

Now, the writing Marguerite Duras said that, in reality, mistakes do not exist, they are just strange acts that we commit from time to time to learn and channel our paths in a better way. That is the key, to understand that, no matter how difficult we see our reality at a given moment, we are always in time to find the most appropriate psychological resources, the most correct answers.

The secret is not to run away, not to look back and train ourselves as skilled human beings to shape our best version. That where, as the essayist Joseph Joubert said, not letting problems settle forever in the armchairs of our homes.

When things go wrong … what can I do?

We have all read or heard that phrase of ” when things go wrong, don’t go with them . ” It is a well-intentioned idea, it is true; however, from a psychological point of view, the reality is different. Often times, we are more than forced to spend a certain time with these adverse things, because the difficulty does not escape from one day to the next. It takes time, so it is good to be prepared to cohabit for a more or less extended time with problems, until you can solve them.

However, how to do it? What can we do when these twists and turns appear in our present? We pointed out at the beginning, we must awaken our internal strengths, those of which Martin Seligman spoke to us in his theory on the keys to happiness.

Let’s now look at three steps to think about.

1. Most important: emotional stress

When things go wrong, we can reach that moment when we feel overwhelmed. It is as if we have no control over our reality and everything, absolutely everything, gets complicated at times. This feeling is produced by emotional stress, an internal state capable of blocking our mood, thoughts and our ability to react.

Thus, studies, such as those carried out by Dr. Elyse Dam Glausser, from the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), indicate that this lack of emotional regulation is our main enemy when it comes to getting the best out of ourselves. Therefore, in order to deal with the difficulty and to think of more creative solutions, we need to follow these steps:

• Accept your emotions, identify them, name them.
• Pay attention to the thoughts that are linked to those emotions (I feel so distressed that I think current situations or problems can only lead to catastrophes).
• Practice deep breathing and stop those thoughts. In those moments of stress, the one who rules your mind is the amygdala. It is she who sends you signals flavored with fear and anguish. Activate your prefrontal cortex, where logical and rational thinking is directed. In these cases, techniques, such as mindfulness, can help you.

2. Corrects obstacle thought patterns

People are made of cells, nerves, bones and also beliefs, some of them wrong. We talk about those ideas that put sticks in the wheels of our ideas, stocks in every step we take; An internal voice tells us that everything will go wrong, that a certain person did the same and failed or that the best thing, in certain cases, is to do nothing and let the storm blow away, pushed by time.

Our mind can be our worst enemy when things go wrong. Therefore, here cognitive restructuring is a technique that can help us a lot. What does it consist of? It basically involves detecting those negative or blocking beliefs, attitudes and schemes and turning off their power. Many of those inner focuses have to be rewritten and injected with creativity and hope.

3. Accept, transform and project

Seneca said that adversity is the best occasion for our virtues to emerge. We are used to being told that, when things go wrong, you have to be strong, but in reality, more than strong you have to be brave and creative; that is our potential, these are our best virtues.

Thus, to go through these difficult times, the ideal is to take three steps. The first, accept what happens to us. The second, make small changes to transform our present. It is about creating small advances that little by little will bear fruit in due course. Finally, a very successful tool is to think about what we want for our future.

It is of little use to look at the past, at what we had yesterday. When things go wrong, we must plan, project, devise small objectives that will take us little by little, to that most suitable horizon.

To conclude, just insist once again that these processes are neither easy nor quick. Sometimes we take one step forward and one step back. It’s essentially about being persistent, staying calm, and letting our best version emerge.