I’ve learned English with TED for sometimes. I find that it is not just about English Speaking. It involves stepping out of your thinking frame to enable you to look at things from a different aspect—or precisely, the ideas worthy of spreading.

The most frequently mentioned phrase I heard recently in TED is a phenomenon called “post-traumatic” growth. In general speaking, the traumatic events in life, if they couldn’t break you, can result in growth and transformations.

And all of those speakers who mentioned post-traumatic growth in their speech have not only gone through the worst times of their lives, but they’d learned to embrace their personal trauma and hardships during this process.  

They’ve finally taught by life to tackle tough challenges with more determination, more optimism and more creativity. And by itself alone that is enough to lead them to the great success, both in career and in life.

Shane Koyczan, who had been abandoned by his parents and bullied throughout his school time, has grown up to be a success poet who made the world known animation: To this day;

Jane Mcgonigal once spent three whole months in bed, tortured by constant, splitting headaches, seriously considering suicide. In the end, she came up with a computer game to save herself from suffering, and helped many people just like her.

Regina Hartley, the fourth child of five raised by a single mother in a rough neighborhood and with a father who had serious mental disease, managed to become a top HR executive.

I could go on and on.

They all hit the bottom of life, somehow, they bit the bullet and managed to climb up to the top of the mountains.

I’m not saying traumatic event is not scaring, and it doesn’t hurt. It certainly does. I’m not saying that it won’t lead to depression and mentally breakdown. It will.

But things just happened. We have to think positively. Life is nothing but a balancing act. The less you have it to do with the pains, the more it will do with the beauty.

Year 2018 could be one of the worst years in my whole life. And also, in this year I met a better version of myself.

The willpower actually works like a muscle. It gets stronger the more you exercise it. And the hardships of life drive you into the corner and force you to keep trying. It’s like pushing you into a compulsory military camp where workout has become a daily must.

So don’t be scared, if the downhill of your life has become bottomless cliff. Take it as a long-distance trek, where you have the chance to develop the muscle and grit required to become successful.