How Challenging Times Can Help Us Connect With the Core of Who We Are

Life transitions are the interesting chapters of our internal autobiographies, that provide us with the opportunity, tools and the reason to transform ourselves for the better.

We need to take small steps, or ‘microsteps’ to accept these transition moments, visualize and plan out the change, shed our old ways, unveil our transformation and the resulting new self, and to storify the entire transition.

Sharing our transition, transformation and the obstacles we were able to overcome is a crucial step that heals.

A study in 1986 that persuaded people to write about their traumatic experiences revealed that many started crying during the writing process, but it worked like a catharsis, and led to their understanding themselves better and eventually getting healed.

• A feeling of profound gratitude towards whatever good one’s life has to offer, however small, contributes towards people finding meaning in their transition.
• Rituals provide the space and the ‘container’ by which a demarcation is created, and the outside world is not hindering, creating a safe zone to get healed.

• Happiness is not something permanent or even graspable. It is a temporary, fleeting phenomenon, focused on the present.
• Finding meaning is like stitching together the past, present and future and knitting a coherent narrative, a story that makes the journey of life a worthwhile endeavour.
• The true meaning of life is when it gets uprooted in the pursuit of something sacred and transcendental or some higher calling.