I wanted to expand more on this story you told here sandworm - the moral 'being grateful' during turbulent/hard times. There's one religion that follows this principle, so even if things are very bad and they share their feelings....they'll end it with a "thank God" after. Often we hear some say, I've lost faith because these bad things are happening, so this principle helps with this.

It also branches into the concept of 'acceptance' and this has helped me during hard times. Acceptance doesn't mean giving up or to stop helping ourselves...it just means to stop ruminating and not feeling desperate for a solution. When someone's in the depths of despair, all they want is to get rid of the pain or circumstance....this often clouds logical thinking. If nothing changes, they end up feeling more despair and hopelessness. This principle allows a person to calm down and move on, to what solutions are possible. The Serenity prayer covers this well.

I happen to be living with an emotionally volatile person, who usually has the power to get to me. I have learned how not to let his emotions drag me down most of the time. Giving it a visual picture helps - I imagine these negative emotions served to me on a tray and I can either accept or reject it. Peoples emotions can be contagious - for example if a man has a fight with his wife - he storms out of the house and probably will cut off another driver....who then is pissed off and creates his own trail of misery. Then this same man goes to get coffee and is rude to the lady and she's then in a rotten mood, who then takes it out on her coworkers. It's a big ripple affect or I like to imagine spreading the negativity like peanut butter. The trick is how do we avoid letting people like this ruin our days.

As I've gotten older, I've learned many lessons I wish I would have known when I was younger. I try to look at the bad times/events in my life as 'lessons' and realize good can come out of bad experiences.