4 Painful but Beneficial Situations

Most people seek comfort in life, ignoring the fact that risks might be hidden there. However, things that make you suffer might be blessings in disguise, because they force you to think things over and grow, which often leads to a beneficial outcome.

4 situations that seem distressing in the beginning, but turn out to be beneficial eventually

1. Giving up a goal halfway

We have been told since our childhood that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well. Giving up something halfway is never a good choice. Sometimes, even when you feel that something is not meant for you, that you are unable to cope with it, you do not dare to give it up halfway.

However, Wrosch and Miller stated in their article published in Psychological Science that when you find that you can not possibly reach a goal, leaving it might be the most beneficial decision. By giving up a goal not possible to achieve, you may avoid repeated failures and the negative impacts they might have on your mind and body.

2. Collapse of faith

There is a saying that if the direction is wrong, stopping is really moving forward. If you experience a major blow to your faith, such as being betrayed by someone you trust most, being hurt by someone you love most, being sold out by your best friends, seeing the cruelty in society, seeing those people who would do anything to profit themselves, your faith may collapse immediately. It seems that a part of you is torn apart, and it hurts deeply.

However, psychologists have found that these experiences renew people’s mentality and enable people to develop new capabilities to adjust to society. Additionally, the reconstruction of your mentality enables you to be more resilient to frustration, and see things from different perspectives. When you face the same difficulty next time, you will have a better ability to deal with it. More importantly, you will find that you have grown stronger and more powerful internally, and you are not afraid to face the problem alone anymore.

3. Fierce arguments

Our culture stresses that if the family is harmonious, everything will go well. So you prefer avoiding arguments with family members or with your friends. However, psychologists have found that if both parties speak what is really on their minds, it is beneficial for the relationship. Arguing between a couple or lovers may test the bottom line of the other side, and express dissatisfaction and expectations, but these are crucial for intimate relationships.

Constructive arguing may objectively reflect disappointment, dissatisfaction, perspectives, and requests. In the argument, you may look within and find the problems between the two parties and correct yourself. It is not a release of hatred, the accusation of old faults, or conquest over the other side by a loud voice. It is a form of communication. If you can see the inner needs of the other party in arguments, you know how to fix the relationship and there won’t be any resentment left.  

4. Overwhelming sorrow

You suffer a lot when you lose a lover, lose someone who is intimate with you, you feel betrayed, or fail in your career. However, a study of 97 college students disclosed that after they finished their “diary of tears” for 40-73 days, 30 percent of the students developed positive thinking. The louder they cried, the more positive they became. It might be because loud crying may better release the suppressed emotions hidden deep inside. 

Sorrow can also improve our attention to and memory of details in our environment. A study shows that those who were emotionally negative may remember more details and skip misleading messages. Those emotionally positive ones made more mistakes. It might be because we tend to indulge ourselves in good feelings when we are happy, and pay less attention to our environment, allowing false information to deceive us. Therefore, everything can be both harmful and beneficial, happiness might bring sorrow, and you might lose something but gain something else. You need to see things and evaluate people from more perspectives and in a rational way.

Translated by Audrey Wang

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