How to Reframe Difficulties in Life (They Either Make You or Break You)

Life is the gentle, salty breeze off the ocean, and the terror of a thundering avalanche cascading down a mountainside. It is alluring and exciting, but it’s also full of unrelenting strife, turmoil, and heartache. Beneath the glow of beautiful sunrises and sunsets, war, famine, and death walk hand-in-hand through the same streets as a mother nursing her baby, their cold, lifeless hands stretching toward your door. These wraiths follow you wherever you go. Flee to the ends of the earth if you must, but adversity will still track you down, emerging like a wolf on the hunt. When it finds you, it will rip a hole through your chest, leaving a lasting scar lest you dare forget its touch. Living, then, isn’t about creeping through life, hiding from every shadow dancing under moonlight. No. It’s facing life head-on. Unrelenting in your resolve. To live. To really live, you must know how to reframe difficulties in life. This skill is the dividing line between those who break and those who rise.

The Power of Adversity to Shape the World

Without adversity, humanity would be frozen in time, unchanging, a civilization without invention or progress. The world as you know it would not exist because adversity demands innovation. 

Every great civilization throughout history was birthed through fire and agony. It was the pain and suffering experienced by our forefathers, with the blood of struggle still warm on their hands, that forced them to forge a stronger, more resilient world for the generations to come. The technology of each age, from Roman aqueducts to our modern internet, was driven by the desire to overcome the difficulties of life. It’s the story of the collective learning to embrace hardship, which ignites transformation and therefore drives the pursuit of human flourishing. 

However, it’s not just the collective driving the change. It’s the individuals within it who choose to embrace the pain and suffering—those who endure hardship, refusing to let life pummel them into the ground. It’s the relentless who create the change so desperately needed, and in doing so, find healing, passing it on to future generations.

If it weren’t for those resilient men and women of the past, we’d still be plowing our fields with horses and oxen, or languishing under the oppressive heat of the mid-summer sun without the air conditioning we take for granted in our large, bright, modern homes. 

There would be no cars. No electricity. Forget modern medicine. We’d be setting the broken bones of our children with makeshift wooden splints and torn shirts, praying they heal correctly so they don’t end up crippled for life. Or worse, fighting to thwart infection that could lead to sepsis, gangrene, and death. 

While history shows us the grand, world-shaping power of adversity, its truest force is revealed in the quiet, unseen battles fought within a single human life.

From Collective Struggle to Personal Transformation

The comforts you enjoy today aren’t because humanity as a whole made them possible. It was the individuals within it that changed the course of history. At times, it was a single individual who turned the world upside down. 

Alexander the Great united vast territories under one empire, spreading Greek culture, language, and ideas across Europe, Asia, and Africa. Isaac Newton revolutionized science with the laws of motion and universal gravitation, reshaping humanity’s understanding of the universe. Steve Jobs redefined communication and technology, making it accessible with personal computers, smartphones, and digital ecosystems.

Other times, small groups of individuals joined forces to do the seemingly impossible. The Founding Fathers of the United States crafted a democratic framework that influenced constitutions and governance around the world. The Wright Brothers pioneered controlled, sustained flight, opening the age of aviation and changing global transportation and warfare. The Abolitionists, diverse leaders and activists, combined efforts and dismantled slavery in the Western world, reshaping moral and legal systems.

You may be someone who dares to shape the culture around you, or you may be more withdrawn, not driven toward the spotlight. Either way, you have a responsibility to leave this world a better place than when you came into it. And the only way to do that is by learning how to reframe the difficulties you face in life. 

There’s no other way to increase your peace and joy than by plowing through the hardship thrown your way. 

Most hit that wall of turmoil and buckle under its unrelenting pressure, the weight of it crushing them into subservient silence. But the choice of standing unmoved or allowing yourself to be annihilated is up to you. Your thinking and your beliefs around your situations and who you are make it so.

How to Reframe Difficulties in Life

Learning how to reframe difficulties is a habit that takes practice—forging the adaptive mindset necessary to endure life’s inevitable storms. 

It’s the reason why many cultures worldwide used rites of passage to transform their boys into men. They were meant to force the young man to the precipice, standing on the brink of death, watching their soul float over the void, wondering if they’d make it back alive. 

These weren’t young men in their early to mid-twenties. Many were between the ages of twelve to eighteen years old—forced into brutal trials—and the result was a stronger, more resilient member of the tribe. 

What our ancestors understood is that the mind, hardened from intense trials, is freer than one shielded from hardship. It’s able to stand unbroken amidst the swirling storms because it’s had to hold its own in the face of extreme adversity. 

This isn’t to say that hardships have never broken people. On the contrary, the road of life is littered with the terrified and broken, victims of their unforgiving circumstances. However, difficulties are not the cause for this—the symptom is the result of an ill-prepared person. 

But a mind that’s prepared, one that’s been through the wringer, will often have a much more profound sense of freedom because it now knows what cards life holds up its sleeves. 

The question then becomes, how do you reframe difficulties in life so they make you rather than break you?

Acknowledge the Reality

The first step is to acknowledge what’s actually going on instead of cowering in fear or allowing anxiety to overwhelm you. You must take charge of your mind and call it what it is. Stop denying that adversity exists and pretending the wolf isn’t waiting right outside your door. 

The reality is this: people suffer every day. They’ve watched their kids die of starvation. Sickness and disease have silently stalked humanity throughout the ages, while war and famine have swept through civilizations, leaving nothing but ruin in their wake. Car accidents, opioid deaths, and job loss; Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and homelessness—all just a drop in the ocean of suffering. 

Your choice then is to either succumb to the pain and tragedies you’ll experience in life, because they’ll cut you through and through if they haven’t already—nobody escapes without battle scars—or you can rise above them, shield strapped to your arm, sword in hand, poised and ready for battle. 

But you can’t rise above it if you won’t acknowledge the situation. This doesn’t mean acknowledging it by collapsing into victimhood. Instead, look at the situation objectively and say to yourself:

“This is what I’m dealing with right now. 

This is what I’m going through.” 

This acknowledgment, untethered to emotion, will bridge the gap from a fear-based response to one that lets you shift perspective and begin to take control of the experience. 

Shift Perspective 

Instead of letting hardship melt your resolve, you must view it as the crucible that forges growth. You are the fiery, glowing metal tempered by the hammer of life. 

Every time the master smith strikes a blow, you get to decide whether to resist or adapt to the pressure. If you resist, you will eventually fracture and be thrust back into the fire. 

By shifting perspective, you allow the blows to land, but you adapt, and in time, you emerge as a formidable weapon.

Learning to shift your perspective takes time and patience. It’s a relentless cycle of trial and error. Sometimes you’ll get it right, but many times you’ll feel the fire seeping into your bones. The constant failure can be so daunting that your mind will scream for relief—so you’ll lie to yourself and say it isn’t working, looking for any excuse to quit. 

But that’s part of the battle. 

It’s being willing to stand up again each day, knowing flames await and that at any moment the hammer will fall, yet standing nonetheless. 

You change your identity from a victim to an overcomer. A conqueror. A sharpened blade ready for anything that comes your way. 

Shifting perspective means you look at adversity not as a soul-quenching problem, but as a chance to extract each lesson as it’s branded on your skin.

Extract the Lesson

Regardless of how hard you fight to protect yourself, the fire remains; it wounds, and scars are inevitable. You can complain, say life isn’t fair, and ask, “Why me?” but that path locks you into victimhood and deeper strife. 

The people you esteem as heroes are the ones who forged a path through adversity. Many of them fought and bled to become the people you admire, and they did it by asking a different question. Instead of “Why me?” they asked, “What is this teaching me?” or “What can I learn from this experience?”

They took the beatings and the blows all the while silently screaming, “I won’t let this define me.”

They didn’t try to escape the pain; they embraced it. They learned from it and used it to drive them forward. It’s what makes them stand out—their forging made them formidable—and it’s the very mentality you must adopt if you want to emerge unbreakable. 

Act with Purpose

If you want to redefine your life, you must channel adversity into deliberate action. 

Stop making excuses. Stop blaming others for your circumstances. Take responsibility and own your mistakes, your flaws, your brokenness. But know this: being broken is ok. 

Sometimes you get struck down, and it takes time to get back on your feet. But if you don’t summon the will to rise again and don't take responsibility for your struggles, then don’t expect life to get any better. As William Ernest Henley said,

Repeat and Refine

This reframing, the shifting of perspective, is an ongoing process because resilience is built through repetition; it’s what allows you to develop the habits needed to change your life. 

It means stepping into the fire willingly and deliberately, knowing the hammer is about to fall, but letting it fall all the same. 

Each time you step into that forge, you’ll emerge harder and stronger than the time before, and when life assaults you with turmoil, you'll be ready for what comes. 

How to Reframe Difficulties in Life: Choosing Your Place in the Story

The trajectory of your life is in your hands. It’s your choice, your decision to be a victim or to overcome. 

Life doesn’t play favorites. You’re dealt the hand you've been given, and it’s up to you to make something of it because you still have a say in the matter. You can decide to narrate yourself into a corner, fearful and unmoving, or embrace the difficulties as they come. 

Whether it’s the storm battering your world or the wolf and hammer leaving their scars, you get to write the ending. 

Remember, it’s only because of the storms that the soul of life becomes rich enough to bloom. 

To live, then. To really live, you must know how to reframe difficulties in life because it’s this skill that makes all the difference between those who break and those who rise.

Until next time,

Josiah

For more information and resources, visit josiahthibodeau.com