Wisdom is about having a broader perspective concerning what can happen in one’s life. Do difficult life experiences really help us in this?
According to an article on the psychologytoday.com website, there is no clear path leading from adversity to wisdom. To a large extent, it depends on the following factors:
- How you experienced those hardships or traumatic life events
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What resources you had to help you. Were these internal or external capacities? Was there social support?
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What did you learn from the hardships and did this learning process energise your new outlook?
Sometimes hardships will result in no outcome whatsoever. It is about more than just surviving hard times.
It is a question of how you deal with the difficulties and what you learn from your experiences. Hardships can be described as trials that disrupt our sense of competence, feelings of safety and predictability, or our understanding of the world. Our personal identity is rewritten by such experiences.
How we see life and ourselves
During difficult times, we define ourselves. When making the effort to sort things out after a difficult life event, we arrive at a new meaning. If you ask someone about such an event and they have a ready answer, that is a good sign. Hardships are important because of the changes that come afterwards.
In order to overcome problems, we can use our own skills and qualities. It also seems to be important whether we are expected to adjust quickly and return to our usual routine, or whether we are given time to develop and change as we come to terms with what has happened.
-jk-