Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?” Rumi
We all go through rough patches in life.
We face unwanted changes
Sickness. Relationships ending. The passing away of loved ones and other circumstances that are out of our control.
You might be suffering from anxiety, stress, uncertainty and pain.
When I went through a divorce a few years ago, my life had turned upside down.
Just getting through each day was a struggle as my relationship, house, career, and living location all changed over a period of a few months.
I didn’t know how to handle it or get through each day.
Turning to spiritual teachers, working on my own spiritual practices and going on a journey to search for answers, here is what I learned about spiritual ways to get through unwanted changes.
Here are 8 spiritual ways to stop resisting the changes in your life and using them to your advantage.
1. Believe that everything is for your highest good.
No matter what’s going on in your life, believe it’s happening for the best.
You don’t know if that breakup is truly heartbreaking or going to be heart opening.
You don’t know if that physical ailment is going to be soul-crushing or soul opening.
What we think is bad for us may end up being the thing we needed in the long run.
No matter how bad it is, believe that it’s what you need and believe that now is the right time to experience it.
2. Take everything that happens as learning.
You can immerse yourself in the ups and downs of life wondering why things happened, wallowing in sorrow and pain.
Or you can use your current challenges and past difficulties as moments of learning.
Figure out what happened in the past and what lessons it had for you.
Look at the present moment like a student in search of clues and messages.
Every bad thing that happens can be source of learning. Every moment of learning can be a source of wisdom.
Whatever pain or struggle comes your way, get curious about the lesson this life circumstance has for you.
Get curious about the changes in your life.
3. Be thankful that you’ve been given whatever it is that has come into your life.
Instead of spending so much energy resisting life and what comes into it, what if you opened your heart to what comes into it.
If you begin to see every circumstance and experience, you can’t but feel appreciation and gratitude for it.
Also, I’ve noticed that when you start extending gratitude to the bad things that happen, you change the way you feel about the challenge you’re confronting.
When you change the way you feel about the problem in your life, the problem itself begins to change.
A reframe in the mind reframes the circumstances and how you feel about it.
The circumstances then begin to miraculously shift in your favor.
4. Cultivate feelings of peace, positivity and optimism.
I know it’s super impossible to do – to seek peace in the midst of your life storms but it is possible.
Using spiritual practices like breathing, meditation and yoga can help you calm your inner world and feel more at peace no matter what is happening.
Even if your life is upside down, looking at life through the most positive prism possible helps you feel motivated that things are going to get better.
Spiritually speaking, your internal state of being affects your surrounding circumstances.
Get calm on the inside, to get some relief on circumstances on the outside.
5. Use every disappointment as an opportunity to serve others.
What is the best use of your pain and struggle?
Service!
Use the pain that you’re going through now to help someone in a similar situation.
Or when you are going through challenges, serve others during that time.
The best way to stop thinking about your own life problems and pain is to be there for others and take the focus of yourself.
The best way for you to give back and use your problems to your advantage is to share the experience and learnings with others to make their lives easier.
The laws of cause and effect will work to your advantage when you help others going through the same struggles you did.
6. Allow life events to drop away the falsehoods and get closer to your truth
This doesn’t have to be as esoteric as it sounds.
We put up a lot of fronts in life. Thanks ego!
We are attached to our physical appearance, career, social status and political beliefs.
When your life begins to fall apart and everything you know is now unfamiliar, you begin to drop all the ego identifications that you’ve been using your whole life.
You will begin to look beyond your profession, social status, living environment and get to who you really are.
The more your external circumstances shakes your world, the deeper to the core you can go.
7. Use the power of surrender to allow life to lead the way
You may have wanted your life to work out a certain way and when life goes awry, you’re not able to manage it.
You resist the changes you don’t want, kicking and screaming.
You wish it was different.
You feel a whole set of emotions that resist the circumstances unfolding in your life.
You ruminate on the past, you fight the current circumstances and you try hard to force a different result.
You don’t have to give up and give in when life comes a knocking.
You can go from fighting what comes your way to allowing life to lead the way.
Life will throw at you what it wants. Your job is to ride the wave like a surfer in the violent storm.
It’s to stay standing while the waves and wind try to push you off your board.
You can’t control the violent waves but you can learn to ride them.
8. Put all your focus on the moment at hand.
Have you noticed that you’re in every moment except the present one?
In this very moment, you may not have the problems that you think you have.
In this very second, your fears, worries and frustrations don’t exist.
Fear, worry and stress are only for a time and place that isn’t here yet.
Live too much in the future and you will continue to wallow in the fear of what is to come.
Live too much in the past and you are marinating in a place that is no longer in existence.
Bring yourself back to this breath. Focus on this task.
Be present to the people and moments in front of you now.
Just take it each moment at a time.
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