#26 What to do when life gets hard

The best cure when you feel like throwing a pity party is serving others. Love others, read good books that you can learn from and realize that you aren't alone. Failure isn't final.

We strive to be green and growing. Sometimes we feel like a seed in the ground fighting in the darkness to break to the surface. Keep growing, you will make it.

It's in the darkness that you see things. When you are in the lights its easy to know what you want, but some things only illuminate when its pitch black. The stars are a beautiful sight, but cannot be seen during the day.

• Do you know anyone who walks through the 'darkness' well? When they are in the midst of adversity they have trained themselves to think differently, change and overcome the trials humbly and without complaint. That is how we want to be. We roll with the punches and grow from them.

Feel the pain love the pain. Feeling pain is a sign that you are getting stronger, take it and grow with it. Remember this when parenting, you want your kids to have struggles and to overcome those problems. They have to get stronger as they grow up, adulthood is a smack in a the face for most youth, don't make it any harder. Love them but don't take their problems away, it makes them stronger.

A quote from JFK says "Do not pray to have easier lives, pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for your tasks to equal your power, pray that your power will equal your tasks, then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, you will be the miracle."

Let the trials refine us, not define us. Go into the trial wanting to learn something from it, don't make your suffering in vain. You are meant to learn and grow, this is how it's done. Life's most powerful teachers are love and pain.

A line from Marcus Aurelius says "The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to the actions advances actions." When you have things trying to stop you, realize that it's not an opportunity to quit, its one to keep going and get stronger.

Other resources:

How can I stay Motivated to do the things I Need to Do?

How to be more authentic

What your actions are really saying