Adversity. Oh boy - adversity. It’s something that we all deal with on a daily basis. Sometimes they are small things, sometimes they are big but every time they feel challenging. Adversity can occur in your personal life, your financial life, your relationships, your professional life and just your day to day walking around life.
A lot of times, as people, adversity can change the course of our day. It can knock us down and keep us there. It can take a great day and totally ruin it and we throw in the towel and say to ourselves “tomorrow will be better.”
This happen to me probably on a daily basis. Every single day something in those above categories happens. Right when things seem to be going perfect, life tries to knock me on my butt. It tries to stop me from what I’m working towards. It tries to test me.
Early on in my career, I would let adversity win every single time. I had emotional reactions every time that something bad would happen. It would ruin my day and ultimately I was preventing myself from living to my true potential. There’s a subtle message right there - I was preventing myself from living to my true potential it wasn’t adversity’s fault. It was my reaction to that adversity.
Over the years I’ve gotten better at dealing with it. Sometimes I still need reminders that everything is going to be OK but most of the time I believe a few different things about adversity:
1. Adversity is life’s way of testing you.
2. Life happens for you, good bad or indifferent.
3. Your reaction to adversity will define who you ultimately become.
Once you realize that adversity is simply life’s way of testing you, you become much more self aware of what’s going on and can deal with adversity head on. You are able to not let adversity define you for the worse but instead, define you for the better.
Adversity, to me, is a gift. It’s a gift to have the opportunity to grow each and every moment life throws you a curve ball. Your reaction to adversity will define who you become - simple as that.
When adversity appears, to you crumble or do you rise? Do you keep going through they day doing the things that you set out to do or do you throw in the towel? These daily micros decisions that you are faced with can build you up larger than you could ever imagine or they can send you into a downward spiral. So how are you going react?
We all have the strength within us to overcome even the most difficult of situations. There is nothing that we can’t grow and learn from we just need to always be self aware in the moment to recognize that those things are happening for us and we are meant to grow from them.
Your reaction to adversity will shape your life for the better or it will shape your life for the worse - it’s all up to you. So how are you going to react?
