When faced with a difficult situation, it is so tempting to react in a number of ways that don’t require too much work on our part. Yes, I am talking about the hiding from your problems, the sulking in your room with Netflix and ice cream, the oversleeping, the under-sleeping, and basically withdrawing from everything. Even though these are our go-to responses, they are not the only way to deal with a difficult situation. (And yes I know that if someone told you to “find the bright side,” you would probably want to punch them in the face and keep eating your ice cream.)But really, that is exactly what we should all try to do. Even if you can’t find something directly good in your bad situation, if you look hard enough, you can find how its presence resulted or connected to something good--even if it takes a while to see this.

Finding the good in things is something I have worked on a lot in my life without even realizing it. It just seems to be my go-to reaction at this point. A few years ago, I was having a sleepover with my best friend who I always told everything to. She helped me through anything that I was dealing with, and vice versa, and our sleepovers were basically mini therapy sessions. At the time I was dating around a bit, but nothing was working out, and I was dealing with a few of those relationships gone sour.

I decided that I was going to make a list of all of them, and I was going to come up with one thing that I learned from each. I didn’t realize then how much I would learn from that experience. It helped me to get out of the rut that I was in and move on. Now I can look back at these experiences and not feel angry, upset or regretful. I know that each of them had to happen to get me where I am today.

I have plenty of other stories where this philosophy rang true in my life. There’s the time that a sprained ankle in the middle of a long hike resulted in a strong friendship that wouldn’t have formed otherwise, or when my moving ultimately resulted in a friend getting saved and brought to Christ. Why should you look for the good in every situation? Well, it is honestly a great way to cope with things. How can you continue to be upset about something if you see the reason for it, and that reason is ultimately good? You can’t. You end up forcing yourself to move on and accept things for what they are.

An even bigger reason to try your best to find the good is that it allows you to use your own struggles for the good of others. Once you get over what you’re going through and can see how it helped you in the long run, it is so much easier to go alongside someone who is going through the same thing. You actually understand them because you were there, but you also have the positive outlook that they are missing. Really thinking hard about how one thing led to another causes our life stories to be fully formed, which helps you discover who you really are.

I know it can be hard, and I'll admit that I still need some Netflix and ice cream sometimes, but you’d be surprised what taking a step back and looking for the good could do for your life. Sometimes it’s harder to find the good than at other times, but I promise you that you can do it if you look hard enough.