There are many schools of thought that influence how we deal with the negative aspects and challenges in life.
Let me begin with an example. You live in a house where a loud animal, doesn’t belong to you, so killing it isn’t an option, keeps on making all this noise. You can keep on driving your self crazy with the imposition and disturbance in your life, you can try to turn your mind away from this challenge and ignore the nuisance, or you can take on the challenge and harness its energy by perhaps becoming friendly with its owner, or even friendly with the animal.
When people are faced with bad patterns and habits in life, let’s say, being easy to anger or a weakness in discipline pertaining to eating habits, there are various ways people address and take on these issues.
One way, is to endlessly recognize and concede to this weakness and bad habit, and somehow try to fight and control the constant invasion and assault on your peace and harmony. This keeps you constantly aware and entangled with the negative, and ultimately you are always attached to what you would like so much to free yourself from. In the end, you will never gain the upper hand and it leaves you drained.
A second way would be to understand, that in the process of fighting the problem head on, you are wasting time and energy on a never winning proposition. You try another method, to divert and distract your mind away from these preoccupations so you can dedicate your life to your goal more purely. Instead of dieting all the time and fighting the cravings, you focus on living a healthy lifestyle.
A third way, is to recognize, everything in life is planned and planted by a benevolent G-d. All that G-d does is for the good, and a person should always be accepting of those things that appear bad and negative, for the good.
Whether it’s not being rich enough, craving food all day, being short, or being angry, there is something there in this energy, which could be redirected for the good. So, the anger turns into an energy and force to accomplish positive things, and the cravings for food becomes an opportunity to become a food critic etc.
When a person finds a way to turn all of life encounters for the positive, and in this faith, is accepting of everything that comes their way, besides not wasting an opportunity for the good, this person is never jealous, doesn’t need to compare themselves to others, and never needs to feel “successful’. He is not lacking “success” to feel fulfilled. In this belief, every day doing ones own very best, becomes a source of great fulfillment, and satisfaction.
This third method of dealing with life is obtained through the learning of Chassidus, an offshoot of the study of Kabbalah.