Tough Experiences That Ultimately Makes You Stronger

Think for a minute about your life and the experiences that have shaped you. What do you see? When I do this, I recall not the times I passed the exam, got the job or grant, fell in love, or made a new friend. I see the moments in my life that were painful — the situations that exhausted me emotionally and left me nervous about where and what I was doing. I remember these experiences not because they made me want to retreat from the world, but because they helped me evolve within it.

We have a choice in how we live our lives: We can play it safe and ignore what an experience is trying to teach us, or we can use it to help ourselves become more self-sufficient. Here are some experiences every woman should go through to help her understand her worth and to know how to take care of herself.

Letting Others Decide Things

At some point or another, you'll probably have a friend or family member who makes you doubt absolutely every decision you make. At another point, you may find yourself incapable of making a decision without consulting a particular person. You'll put up with it for a while — maybe a long while — but inevitably, there will come a point when you just can't take it anymore.

Hating Your Job

There are probably some fortunate souls who love their careers from start to finish, but odds are that right out of college, or maybe a few years after, you'll find yourself in a position that you aren’t too thrilled about.

Unhealthy Relationships

It would be great if we all had perfect relationships, but life is not a rom-com. If you date, you've likely encountered your fair share of drama. Maybe you stayed in a relationship past its expiration date, or let someone treat you poorly. Maybe you cheated, or they did. Or maybe you loved too much or too little, or lost yourself. The list goes on. As much as bad relationships hurt at the time, they can lead you to healthier relationships after the fact.

Falling Short

Nobody wants to be told that what they're doing is wrong, or that they messed up on that one account and brought the team down. Most of us want to be perfect at what we do and who we are. We think that being perfect would protect us from the hard things in life.

Being Out of Control

According to the old adage, the only thing certain is change. But I think that uncertainty — the sense that things could change — is a pretty sure thing, too. I can’t recall the number of times I've worried about how a situation would play out. My uncertainty would cause anxiety, and pretty soon, my nervous system would be on overload.

All of these experiences push us to question what we want, who we are, and how we want to live and challenge us. They aren’t necessarily feel good experiences, but a lot of them are what we need to live through to understand we have a choice in who we are and how we live.