Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatulahi wa barakatuh,

 

Most people at some point in their life will feel like this; that their life is terrible and they have nothing good in their life or nothing to look forward to. This is very common for everyone to experience at some point.

 

It may genuinely feel like things aren’t good, or even worse than they are only deteriorating, and there may be times when it is like that, but there are also times when they are not but we just don’t see it.

 

Of course, when times are bad, this could very well be a test, but it could also just be your misconceptions. Either way, we can take positives from the experience as tricky as that may seem.

 

Beginning with the best outcome, take some time to really reflect on the good things in your life. You may feel like there is nothing, but if you take the time to think of the small things that we often take for granted, you see how easy it is to lose focus of these blessings. Something as simple as having your health, having your eyesight, having food to eat or a roof over your head. Sure, maybe it’s not the food you want to eat, or the house isn’t as big as you like or you get sick every now and again, but on the most part there are many other hundreds and thousands of people who don’t he of what you have. Take a moment each night to note down 3 things that you are grateful for in that day; things that have made you smile,  people who have made you smile,  or just something like gratitude for your senses or health for example. This will help you to see things from a more positive perspective. You can keep this in a journal to look back on as well as see how things have improved in your life over time; things that you otherwise may not notice.

 

You can also take time to go through each individual difficulty you have faced in the past and analyses them in depth. Often when something terrible happens we can only see the bad in it, but we look at things properly you will often see that much good came out of the difficulty, for example, that it saved you from a fate much worse, or it guided you to something better, either materially, or by strengthening your eman or even improving your character. Once you can see how things that have seemed bad in the past have turned out to bring some good into your life it can make it easier to feel differently towards your current situation in the knowledge and trust that something positive can come out of something seemingly terrible.

 

In the case that your struggles really are being sent as a test then also try to see this a positive. From an Islamic perspective, we know that with trial comes ease, so it will end, that patients in a trial will be rewarded by Allah, and for every teat, you endure, your sins will be expiated. Even look to the beat of people before and how they were tested immensely. If Allah didn’t teat people with a good reason, would he have tested the beat of people?

 

May Allah ease your difficulties and bring you the best in this life and the next.