Right for you, if you:

You know you ought to make a move, but you don't know how to do it.

Without deep misery, you want to navigate through pain.

You find yourself plunged into the wild, and you need a way to swim.

You want to learn and evolve from a traumatic experience so you can change your life for the better.

Thrown to the Unknown

I recall vividly my own traumatic experience, the sinking feeling that my two-and-a-half-year friendship has ended. At the moment , I felt hopeless and a great deal of fear about the uncertain future that was ahead of me. I've changed my whole life because of that relationship, and when it ended, I felt devastated by the thought of having to pick up and chose a new future, particularly in the sad state I was in.

Quick forward to now, almost a year since, when I've never been more at ease or content. It takes a hindsight to be able to look back on the experience and see the methods , techniques and knowledge the helped me navigate the unknown to a better location.

The best teachers can be the worst moments in life. Hard times can destroy some people, but for other people tough times they can provide an incentive to attain a better standard of functioning. This positive shift is known as Posttraumatic Growth (PTG), which is more than just endurance to get back to the point of departure. It's more about flourishing, where you discover extra advantages to your life that are born out of a struggle.

With PTG, development does not arise as a direct result of trauma / hard time, but rather as a result of the difficulty that a person is going through in managing and navigating the new world. This method is what helps you to redefine yourself, and if you do it correctly, you will experience growth and a happier life.

I've just been reading about PTG lately, but I could instantly resonate with it because the traumatic event I've been through was just what I wanted to propel me into a happy existence that better met my individual values.

I want to share with you the method that I used to maneuver through my new world, because the methods and tactics that I used helped me immensely to escape deep misery, tilted the balance to optimistic development, and gave me the power to rebuild a healthier life.

The Pre-Works

When I had been through my traumatic ordeal, it soon became evident how important some of the previous readings I had done on courage, endurance and self-esteem were to gather strength to confront this suffering on my own terms. It's so important to store power and learn in good times. It sets the groundwork to lead you through the hard times. Here are a few tools that I have taken wisdom and inspiration from both before and after the traumatic experience that strengthened me:

Sheryl Sandberg 's Letter on Depression and Resilience: it was pivotal. Sheryl has expanded on this in her excellent book Choice B. These writings speak about the pain she experienced when her husband unexpectedly died and, as a result, threw her life on a radically new and unwelcome course. Her experience, her resilience and her search for support are inspirational.

About Love Blog: I love this blog written by a couple, Mara and Danny, who have gone through some incredibly tough times — divorce and infertility — but turned to love to transform their lives and help others do the same.

Man's Quest for Meaning: This book is a wonderful source of inspiration to pursue faith despite the toughest of situations. It is written by Victor Frankl, who experienced horrific conditions in concentration camps during the Second World War (book crunch here).

Check Inside Yourself: this is a great starting point to be more conscious and to develop a deeper understanding of yourself. It's a pragmatic, easy-to-understand guide to mindfulness, meditation, and emotional intelligence that will help you develop a healthy inner base.

Meditation: Meditation allows you to become self-conscious and to develop a strong inner calm that will get you through tough times. I love the Headspace software, which is a wonderful way to start learning how to meditate. You can get on the right direction just 10 minutes a day.

Choosing to embrace

PTG analysis has demonstrated that the capacity to deal with a condition that can not be reversed is important if one is to be able to respond to a stressful life experience. This is called "acceptance coping" because a new reality must be embraced in order to achieve some form of development and learning.

It took me two days to recognize my condition after the traumatic incident occurred. There was a profound contrast between non-acceptance and the choice to accept the case. Until acceptance, I didn't have much room in my mind, there was a fight going on inside my brain, where I blamed myself, going over all the choices and actions that led to the break-up and the struggle against the new truth.

After two days, I decided to re-read Sheryl Sandberg 's essay on resilience, and after I had done, I decided with my first ounce of resolve to be courageous, to embrace the situation, and to cope with it in the best way I might.

Acceptance to me meant being a friend of mine because there was no one else to be one. I assured myself that I was doing everything I could reasonably do about the knowledge and services I had at the time. The unexpected calmness and stillness that came with recognition was profound. When you give up the blame, you stop denying, you stop struggling, and when you take these things down, you give yourself a little headspace and calm.

Pain Vs: Suffering

An extremely valuable knowledge that can be learned in life is that pain and suffering are not the same thing. They're always packed together, however they can be isolated, and you can feel pain without discomfort. Everyone has a painful time in their lives, and pain is necessary to make you develop and evolve. However, hardship is not a requisite experience for development and can also impede growth, as it can also lead to despair, deep anxiety and depression.

A lot of meditation is focused on distinguishing pain and suffering by the process of "letting go." In the pre-work, I suggested the Headspace app, which is a perfect introductory way to get involved in meditation. During their meditation exercises, you practice observing feelings when they emerge and collapse, and being able to see them for what they are but also being able to let them go. In tough moments, this knowledge and skill will help you control your feelings and feelings so that you can retain your inner composure. There's a nice example that you can see yourself as an ocean – the top layer may be choppy, but dig a little deeper and the heart is still the same – smooth and simple.

Suffering is primarily the product of gripping and aversion. Grasping is when the mind is urgently struggling to hang on to something-that 's why I was profoundly hurting before I decided to acknowledge the condition. Aversion is when the mind refuses to consider anything, such as a new truth.