How Does Our Perspective on Life Reduce Stress, Sorrows, and Anxieties?
Just as termites silently eat our furniture, stress destroys our health. It is the root cause of many illnesses, fears, unrest, and failures. It is a problem we often face, while we cannot find a way to escape. Every few years, new solutions emerge to deal with widespread psychological stress, but they quickly lose popularity. This is because they are often temporary and superficial, not solving the root of the problem.
Using tools like the slime and stress-relief toys or consulting a therapist are efforts to reduce the effect of disruptive stress. Unfortunately, these efforts are often ineffective and cannot create lasting happiness and peace. Almost no one is immune to psychological stress and anxiety. We encounter various problems in different aspects of our lives, so we constantly seek a safe refuge to protect ourselves from their harmful effects. However, some people manage to control different types of stress and handle the situations in a way that not only prevents harm but also uses these challenges as a bridge to progress.
Transforming problems into happiness and finding inner peace in stressful situations is a skill everyone can acquire. However, it requires necessary prerequisites closely linked to our perspective on life. Perhaps, if we knew that our capacity to endure these pressures is directly related to our correct definition of life, we would have certainly sought to understand this correct definition by now.
One of the differences between a materialistic perspective and a divine or fitrah-oriented perspective of life is precisely here: One could argue that a true belief in the hereafter, combined with an understanding of this world’s structure and rules, makes worldly worries gradually lose their significance. So worries, stress, and anxiety reduce as a natural outcome of having the right belief in eternity. In this lesson, we aim to explain how having belief in eternity can reduce stress and worries, fostering inner peace.
The Impact of Having Belief in Eternity
Perhaps what most makes us impatient with our current conditions is imagining that enduring hardships is pointless; this view stems from a lack of right belief in the eternity that is our ultimate destination. Just as the difficulty of climbing a mountain becomes easier with the thought of reaching the summit, and the hardships of studying a difficult field become manageable with the vision of a promising future, having belief in an eternal life in a beautiful, bountiful, and everlasting heaven can also reduce stress and anxieties. It also increases our inner peace, especially if we believe that life in this world is short compared to the eternal life in the hereafter.
In fact, our situation in this world and facing its hardships is like someone building their dream home in a beautiful place. They are ready to endure all financial stress, poor living conditions, long journeys, and fatigue, with the hope of moving into that home. Every time they face these stresses and fatigue, they imagine moving into this dream home, which make them happy and peaceful.
If we were supposed to receive insignificant rewards for good deeds or for hardships we endure, we might become discouraged from bearing these stresses. Believing in eternity helps us find peace, as even the smallest smiles and hardships in life are valued; therefore, We’re willing to endure others’ flaws, bad tempers, and difficult behavior in exchange for a heaven as vast as the skies and the earth.
However, belief in eternity can only be effective if it is rooted in a deep understanding; otherwise, blind, unthinking, or superstitious belief in eternity and the everlasting world is not only ineffective but may have the opposite effect. Belief in eternity is not just hope of Heaven; it is about understanding the truth of our existence, the philosophy of creation, the mathematics of the world, and the role of hardships in this philosophy. This is where we need to revisit the discussion that worldly life is like a gym.
Hardships in the Gym of the World
Almost half of our worries and anxieties stem from the fact that we do not know the world is like a gym. In other words, since we see the world and its problems independent from the hereafter, we not only misunderstand the philosophy behind the problems that engage us in various forms, but we also lose our ability to endure these difficulties and, at times, our peace of mind.
If we were familiar with the rules of the gym of the world, we would know that God created humans for servitude to Him, and without complete obedience to our Mentor, it is impossible to worship Him truly.
We are born into the world to develop our the structure of our soul according to our unlimited potentials and actualize these potentials. This development and actualization happen when we adhere to the instructions that the Mentor gives us. Our Mentor in the gym of world creates an environment full of contradictions and stress to help us break free from our mental limitations and flourish our talent. This is because the more a sportsperson trains in the gym, the more muscles they build and the stronger they become.
We have previously explained that stress and life’s problems are merely training exercises designed to prepare and strengthen us for entry into the hereafter; thus, being aware of the existence of eternity and its undeniable role in our lives can reduce stress and worries, paving the way for us to find inner peace.
In fact, the hardships, difficulties, and trials that we face at different stages of life create conditions for acquiring divine names and attributes, which we need for eternal life in the hereafter. Our strength in eternity, our blessings, and our compatibility with the conditions of the hereafter depend on acquiring these divine names and attributes. If we cannot take care of ourselves and manage family life in critical situations, we cannot acquire the divine names like, Mudabbir (the Planner) or Muhit (the Encompassing). If we get angry over small things, we distance ourselves from the divine name of Haleem (the Forbearing).
Certainly, if each of us has a proper understanding of the hereafter, takes it seriously, and knows the role these hardships play in our ultimate happiness, we are willing to endure some difficulties in this world to access the unlimited blessings and opportunities of Heaven. Since enduring all these hardships leads to entering the hereafter and eternity, we will not lose our peace.
What increases the intensity of our worries, anxieties, and stresses is our perspective on life. If we see this world as the ultimate destination, hardships feel meaningless and unbearable. However, when we recognize this world as a gym and the hereafter as our true and eternal home, every suffering takes on new meaning and significance. Belief in eternity and understanding the purpose of hardships remind us that no effort is fruitless and no pain is ever lost. This perspective gives us an inner strength for endurance, makes our life more peaceful, and even makes us happy in the most difficult conditions. Therefore, the path to reduce stress lies not in the temporary solutions but in changing our perspective and correctly defining life and its ultimate goal.
The secret to accepting and enduring stress can be summarized as follows: We must accept that we are eternal beings. Our life did not begin on earth, and it will not end here. We are travelers passing through this world for a short time to acquire specific abilities, and soon we will return to our true home. What matters in this journey is not the quality of our life on earth but the quality of the tools we prepare here for our eternal life in the home of happiness.