Where are you in life right now?  Are you skipping through a meadow like that little girl in the titles to ‘Little House on the Prairie’, or are you on one way trip to a town called Self-destruction like Nicolas Cage in ‘Leaving Las Vegas’?

If things are peachy for you right now, they won’t be forever.  I’m not trying to piss on your parade, and I’m a big fan of things being peachy, but life will always have something up its sleeve that has the potential to rock you to your core.

Whether you crumble or whether you get back up again is entirely down to you.

Here’s how to face your troubles with confidence -

1. Understand that this too will pass.
Everything passes.  The good times that you wish could last forever will fade, and the bad times that you wish had never happened will all pass into memory.  Just knowing that time is moving and that things will one day be different (even if you can’t possibly see how right now) can be a comfort.

How you feel today doesn’t have to be how you feel tomorrow, next week, next month or next year.

And what if facing up to your troubles and getting through them is the only way you can be sure of becoming the person you’ve always wanted to be…?

2. What would ‘Future You’ say?
Talking of that ‘Future You’, imagine that you’re sitting down with a version of you from the future.  They’ve been through all the crap you’re going through now and a whole lot more besides, and damn it, they look bloody good and have a real vibrancy about them.  They seem to have it all sorted.

So there you are, the two of you sipping on mugs of coffee or cracking open a bottle of wine.  What does this Future You want to tell you?  What do they have to tell you about where you are right now?

What do you want to ask this future version of you?

3. What have you already learned?
A client of mine was in the middle of a crappy, prolonged divorce, and found that she was drinking more than usual, not eating very well and was getting stressed out by the little things that never normally stressed her out.

I made her look at what she could learn from what was working for her and what wasn’t working.  She cut back on the booze, started hitting the gym again, and prioritised time with friends and family.  Next time she hits a wall or faces real trouble she’ll have learned an important strategy that nourishes her and helps keep her feeling grounded.

Even if you’re in uncharted territory, what do you have inside you that can help right now?  What have you learned that can help you navigate through this or find some kind of peace in the middle of it?

4. What if the Universe was testing you?
What if all of this – the heartache, the unfairness, the pain and all the other shit you deal with - was the only way the Universe could see what you’re really made of?

What if the Universe was testing you to see how you can be at your best even when things are at their worst?

If this really was all a test to see what you have right down in your core, how would you respond to what’s happening?

5. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
When I was 18 I went to a homeopath in an attempt to cure the bad acne I was suffering from (my face looked like a jar of marinara sauce had exploded on it).  The focus of that relationship soon turned from curing the acne to having space to talk about what was happening in my head and my heart.  It turned into therapy.

I was all over the place back then (in love with a girl I couldn’t have, frustrated that no-one saw how special I was, yada-yada-yada), and some 10 sessions in I started crying simply because I felt so lost.  I’ve always remembered what my homeopath said to me.

“You don’t have to do this alone Steve.”

That just made me cry even more, because he’d hit the nail on the head.  I’d been trying to do everything myself, and getting royally screwed up in the process.

I’ve always remembered what he said to me, and even though I get that asking for help can be hard (and is always something I forget to do, even now) you can ask for help and people will help.

You don’t have to do it alone.