The goal each and every day of your life is to gradually
grow stronger on the inside, so that less and less on the outside can affect
your inner wellness without your conscious permission.
Truth be told, how you cope with unexpected problems and
frustrations can easily be the difference between living a good life and living
an unhealthy one. If you choose unhealthy coping mechanisms like avoidance or
denial, for example, you can quickly turn a tough situation into a tragic one.
And sadly, this is a common mistake many people make.
When you find yourself facing a disheartening reality, your
first reaction might be to deny the situation, or to avoid dealing with it
altogether. But by doing so you’re inadvertently holding on even tighter to the
pain that you wish to let go of — you’re, in effect, sealing it up inside you.
Let’s imagine someone close to you has grown ill, and
supporting this person through his or her illness is incredibly painful. You
might not want to deal with the pain, so you cope by avoiding it, by finding
ways to numb yourself with alcohol and unhealthy eating. And consequently, you
grow physically ill too while the pain continues to fester inside you.
Obviously that’s not good.
If you notice yourself doing something similar, it’s time to
pause, admit to yourself that you’re coping by avoiding, and then shift your
focus to a healthier coping mechanism, like using the quotes listed later in
this post to help you open your mind.
When you face struggles with an attitude of openness — open
to the painful feelings and emotions you have — you find out that it’s not
comfortable, but you can still be fine and you can still step forward. Openness
means you don’t instantly decide that you know this is only going to be a
horrible experience — it means you admit that you don’t really know what the
next step will be like, and you’d like to understand the whole truth of the
matter. It’s a learning stance, instead of one that assumes the worst.
The Benefits of Healthy Coping
Coping certainly isn’t an easy practice, and I’m not
suggesting that it is. What I am suggesting is that it’s worth your while. With
practice, healthy coping allows you to find better ways of managing life’s
continuous stream of unexpected and uncontrollable circumstances. For example…
A task is harder than you expected it to be — Instead of
running from a daunting and overwhelming task, you can accept it and see what
it’s like to feel uncomfortable and overwhelmed, and still take action
anyway.
An interaction with someone you love angers or frustrates
you — Instead of lashing out at a loved one when you’re upset with them, you
can sit quietly with your difficult feelings and just be open to what it’s like
to feel them. And then, once you’ve had a moment to breathe, you can see what
it’s like to deal compassionately with someone you love who you’re also upset
with. To try to understand them instead of just judging them at their worst.
Unhealthy cravings overwhelm you out of nowhere — You may be
inclined to indulge in unhealthy cravings like alcohol or sweets or sexually
acting out for comfort when you’re feeling stressed out. But you can sit with
these feelings and be open to them instead, and then gradually build positive
daily rituals for coping in healthier ways—taking walks, meditating, talking
with someone about your feelings, journaling, reviewing the relevant quotes
from our book provided in this post, etc.
You are forced to deal with the loss of a loved one — When
someone you love is no longer there, the grief and sense of loss can seem
overwhelming. And at that point, it’s incredibly easy to give in to unhealthy,
“quick-fix” ways of alleviating the pain. But you have to force yourself to do
the opposite—to give yourself compassion, to sit with the powerfully difficult
thoughts and feelings you have, and to open your mind to what lies ahead.
Gradually it becomes evident that loss isn’t just an ending, but also a
beginning. Because while you have lost someone special, this ending, like all
losses, is a moment of reinvention. Although deeply sad, their passing forces
you to reinvent your life, and in this reinvention is an opportunity to
experience beauty in new, unseen ways and places.
And of course, we’ve merely just scratched the surface of an
endless pool of possibilities for healthy coping. The key thing to understand
is that by learning to cope in healthier ways, you will find that you can
better handle anything life throws your way, and come out stronger, and
sometimes even happier, than you were before.
In the end, the world is as you are inside. What you think,
you see, and you ultimately become. So gather your thoughts wisely — think how
you want to live today. Start with some positive quotes to guide you. In
moments of unexpected stress and frustration, an uplifting reminder can make
all the difference in your mindset.
Keep coming back. It works if you work it, so WORK IT, YOU’RE WORTH IT!
Adopted and adapted from an article by Marc Chernoff
https://www.marcandangel.com/2026/02/25/40-quotes-for-coping-with-things-you-cant-control/