Many people do not realize that what truly determines a person's destiny is not how many hardships they have experienced, but how they understand and interpret those hardships. According to professional psychological research, a person's rate of growth is not proportional to the amount of pain they endure. The real factors that play a decisive role are three key psychological mechanisms.

First is cognitive appraisal. When difficulties arise, the brain immediately defines them: Are they threats or information? Failures or feedback? Shame or prompts for "what to correct next"? This mode of evaluation actually determines the upper limit of your mental structure. The same event, interpreted differently, can lead to completely different developmental paths.

Second is meaning construction. The same uncontrollable event may be written into someone's life story as evidence of "I am unworthy" or "I can't," while others use it to rebuild their understanding of themselves, the world, and others. From a professional perspective, this is not simply optimism or self-soothing, but a structural psychological processing ability—whether you can extract order from chaos, find meaning in meaninglessness, determines whether you truly transcend that experience.

Third is self-integration. Growth is not about making pain disappear, but about preventing pain from destroying the self. When a person can incorporate failures, setbacks, and experiences of rejection into their narrative system, making them part of their personality structure rather than long-term shadows or trauma, they enter the path of mature development.

Therefore, the essence of growth has never been about repairing the external world, but about reorganizing the internal structure. What truly changes a person is not what they have experienced, but how they understand those experiences. You change your interpretive approach, your meaning system, your assumptions about the world. The moment these internal structures change, growth has already occurred.

Whether difficulties are resolved is not the key; the key is whether, in the face of hardships, you become a person who better understands the world, others, and yourself. If you are willing, your life can start anew from this moment, being redefined.