Being brave is a matter of choice

Friends of this wonderful community, I extend to you a cordial greeting accompanied by a genuine wish that you are well. Tonight I want to share with you some of the things that have helped me get through difficult times. I hope that you can read my post and that in some way I can pass on something positive to you.

Life is a set of countless situations of different colors that we have to observe and feel. There are very beautiful moments that we treasure in our hearts, but there are also tense moments that we have to go through and leave us with a bitter taste. Although we know that life has its contrasts, we are not always prepared for the dark episodes that come our way.

Particularly, I would rather not go through any painful moments in order to learn life lessons. My dad has always told me that I am very strong and that even if things happen to me that look like a giant trying to stalk me, never forget that only to the strong things like that happen. There was a time when he repeated those words to me so much that I told him that I chose to be weak. I just didn't really understand the background of his words.

With the passing of many years, I understood that at all times my dad has wanted to strengthen me, to help me be brave and one of the ways he has used is the repetition of ideas that have become tattooed in my mind. True, sometimes I am a little slow to understand great truths, there are situations that we do not choose, they just come because that is life, with quite pronounced ups and downs that can tear us apart if we choose to pity ourselves and complain. What my dad has always really wanted to tell me is: "Choose to be strong".

Today I understand that it's not a matter of the strong having very bad things happen to them and the weak not, we are all human and exposed to a number of difficult situations, the point is that we must choose to be strong and face such vicissitude. When my dad told me that I was strong in some stormy moments of my life, he was really inviting me to choose to be strong from my heart and recently I understood it. We are not strong by birth, we are strong by choice, any of us can get through any dark stage successfully if we make a good choice.

Whenever I am in a difficult moment I try to place myself in time, I remember that this horrible present I am living will soon be part of the past and I cling to the idea that time will pass quickly so that the present will be different, change its tone and bring with it times of refreshment. Obviously, in those gray moments I have felt that time becomes my enemy and passes slowly so that I feel the pain of the present to the fullest, even with time walking at a morrocoy pace, my mind does not stop telling me: "This will be part of the past", I repeat it to myself a thousand times until in effect, that present becomes past and the future arrives to become a different present.

Another thing I try to do frequently to avoid staying at the bottom of the underground after having gone through a storm is to dispel with objectivity what I have or can get to have under my control, I focus on what I can do about it and I strive to do it, I do not waste time thinking about what I can not do. If I can't do something, then I stop, I give myself time to meditate and to accept that I simply can't, so I turn that page and focus on what I can do.

Staying calm under adverse circumstances is not easy, however, with motivational words, the right perspective of time and the necessary modesty, I have been able to fight in different areas of my life. I have not come out of it completely unscathed, I still have scars from very hard times but also my courage has been strengthened and I continue to live with joy. At the end of the day, the most important thing is that I feel at peace with myself and in spite of life's ups and downs I feel that peace.