Grace Under Pressure: How to Overcome Life’s Obstacles

Nobody said life is going to be easy (there’s a reason why you cried when you were born). Everyday you spend on God’s good earth, you face new challenges or are busy working on solving old, persistent issues. But here’s irony: overcoming life’s obstacles is a good thing, not a bad one.

For instance, if you train every day either on your own with a life coach , you are willingly challenging yourself. Not only that, but you are willing to accept the physical pain that comeswith physical exertion, but also the emotional pain that accompanies failure.

Maybe you can’t successfully press 135 pounds today without injuring yourself. But given time, and training, you will press 135 pounds easily. That means you must embrace a new challenge and set a new goal of 145 pounds.

Life is like that too. There is no part of your everyday existence that isn’t filled with difficulties, challenges, and seemingly impossible goals. But if you overcome these challenges and do so with grace and determination, you will be rewarded by becoming stronger, wiser, and perhaps even richer.

According to a recent Medium article, the key to facing life’s problems is resilience. Life is all about the ups and downs. On occasion you might even feel like you’re caught in a rut, spinning your tires, but going nowhere.

But by being resilient and strong, you can not only overcome any obstacle that stands in your way, you can do so with what Pulitzer Prize winning author, Ernest Hemingway coined, “grace under pressure.”

Here’s how you can face life’s many challenges with a smile on your face.

Defining Resilience

Technically speaking, resilience is defined as the ability to overcome adversity and to become stronger at all the broken places. Those people who are resilient are better able to adapt to obstacles and sudden change. What’s more important, is that they can do so with true grit.

When it comes to facing adversity head on, you need to develop a positive attitude and develop methods for coping. Resilience is said to not only be about being tough and enduring hard times.

It’s also about maintaining a positive attitude and displaying a sense of hope that everything is going to work out just fine in the end, even if you know in your gut that it won’t.

That said, a resilient person is typically proactive when it comes to problem solving. They are self-aware, and they can adapt quickly to sudden changes, not all of them pleasant. If you do not possess these characteristics, don’t fret. You can work on developing them at any age. You can become a leader, not a follower.

Obstacles and Trials

Let’s face it, obstacles are a part of life…everyday life. They come in all sorts of forms and they can be hard as granite and agonizingly formidable. What’s the first step in overcoming them?

Identifying them or, in the case of bad personal habits like eating, drinking, and smoking too much, admitting them.

Obstacles can come in the form of professional issues at work, or they can be entirely personal, such as a relationship that is just not working even if you’ve been convincing yourself that it is working.

Maybe you have health-issues that you’ve been ignoring, or you lack the confidence it takes to start your own business. While the thought of making positive changes to your life makes you feel good, you stress out about taking the first steps in achieving them.

But by developing inner strength, you will take the necessary first steps in achieving your goals.

You can put the beer can down. You can pass on two slices of pizza when one will suffice. You can give your nasty boss your notice, then immediately drive to the bank to apply for a business loan to create your own business start-up. You can have face-to-face discussion with your partner and tell him or her how you truly feel about your failing relationship. What’s more, you can do these things with courage, grace under pressure, and a smile on your face.

All it takes is resilience and inner strength.

Beginning a New Life

One of the most important ways to build resilience and strength is to practice self-care. This means taking care of your whole body, physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. These qualities will afford you the self-confidence you need to begin a new life.

But be warned, you won’t always succeed at what you set out to achieve. In fact, failure is as important as success. If you succeeded at everything you set out to accomplish, the successes would not be so sweet.

So, when do you begin making a new life for yourself? Right this very moment.

Mary Clark is a recently retired and decorated Colonel in the New York State Troopers. One of the highest-ranking female law enforcement officials in New York State, she served for more than three decades. Today she devotes herself to helping others achieve their life goals through a combination of physical fitness, achieving an optimal mindset, and life balance.