Discovering Your Inner Strength

While life can be extremely rewarding and fulfilling, sometimes it can also knock the wind out of your sails when you experience a painful experience like the shattering of trust, betrayal, abuse, illness, financial distress, and more.?When tough times trigger insecurities, you can discover an inner strength that will get you through almost anything.

Try these ideas to get started:

Reflect on the tough times you’ve had before.?Ask yourself how you got through it. What did you do? What did you think? What did you tell yourself? Your resilience will become obvious as you do this exercise. It’ll also boost your confidence in dealing with other obstacles that can come up in the future.

• Recognize that you’ve made it through those difficult situations.?Then think about what you’re experiencing right now. Is the current situation similar to or much different from your other tough times? Use what you’ve learned from your past challenges and apply that knowledge to a current situation that you may be struggling with.

Learn to talk to yourself in positive, encouraging ways.?This will help you build up your inner strength.

• Speak to yourself as if you were speaking with a friend. What do you want to hear? What do you need to hear to help gather your strength? Is there something specific you are hoping will happen? Give that to yourself through your own encouraging words and actions.
• Practice giving yourself with encouraging, uplifting messages. The messages you give yourself can bring you down or they can propel you through the roughest of circumstances.
• Speaking to yourself with respect, care and encouragement builds your inner strength so it’s there when you need it.?When the going gets tough, you’ll have yourself to fall back on.

Allow yourself time to think through whatever the situation is.?It’s okay to take time to process something shocking, upsetting, or simply something you didn’t expect. The situation (shattered trust or a betrayal for example) can completely change life as you’ve known it so take the time needed to reorient yourself as you decide how to move through the experience. Possibly something not quite as life altering but still a shift from the familiar, also takes time in order to decide on your next best step.

• What are your ideas about how to weather the storm? Examine all the solutions you can come up with. Explain to yourself what you’ll do and how you’ll do it.
• A sense of your own resourcefulness can be found in your ability to problem-solve through challenging situations.

Consider who you regard as role models or mentors.?You selected those people because you respect and admire them. They’ve traveled the path you’re now on or you simply trust their ability to make good decisions. How would they navigate this scenario you’re now faced with?

• Think about their strength of character. What does that strength look like? How does it show itself in their actions and behaviors?

Reflect on what you’ve done or have been through that you’re most proud of.?Did you overcome something challenging in your past like abuse, an addiction, a health issue or a trauma of some kind? Did you overcome your fear to move to a new place, start a new career, or walk up to that person you were nervous to speak to?

• Even though you might have felt afraid, uncomfortable, lost, or confused, you discovered your internal resources and made it through those experiences.
• When you examine what you did to handle those situations and how you made it through, you’ll remember the inner strength you harnessed to help you through it.
• You can get in touch with your own resourcefulness by revisiting those events that bring you confidence and pride.

Sometimes, you’ve just got to “fake it till you make it.”?You can probably recall a time when you felt afraid or weren’t sure you could succeed, but you stood up and met the challenge head on. By taking action, even if you didn’t feel ready,?you moved past your fear and can now enjoy that feeling of success?because you didn’t let your fear stop you.

Discovering your inner strength is possible, even in the toughest of times.?Following any of the steps above will help you discover your courage and resourcefulness.?Who knows what new ideas this may inspire in you!

Dr. Debi

Founder and CEO,?The PBT (Post Betrayal Transformation) Institute