3 Tips to Growing Through Adversity

3 Tips to Growing Through Adversity

Posted to Resource Articles by Cathy Meyer on Fri, 05/14/2010 - 7:24am

Life challenges such as divorce have a way of dimming our spirit. We can go from feeling like a 100-watt bulb to a flickering 60-watt bulb. Worse yet, if adversity is not properly dealt with, we can eventually burn out and find ourselves feeling powerless. That little light that was your spirit just won't shine anymore.

So, what you ask, is the proper way to deal with and view adversity. How do we keep our spirit from growing dim and losing power during difficult times? We all go through adversity; the trick is how to get through adversity without adversity getting the best of us.

Thriving and growing through times of adversity depends on how you view adversity, the attitude you have toward it, and how willing you are to actively work through it. Over time, as I assessed what I have learned and how I have grown through the years, I have come up with a few survival strategies that I feel help me through hard times. They are:

1. Having a Proper Attitude:

I've said before that I don't believe what happens to us is important. It is how we respond to what happens to us that is key to spiritual and physical survival. If you are the type to make a mountain out of a molehill then you are going to have to deal with a mountain instead of a molehill. In other words, our problems are as big as we allow them to become.

Next time you are struggling with a problem, try to bring it and what it means for your life into proper perspective. It may seem huge and insurmountable to you, but is it really? Is it going to mean physical injury, are you going to be burned at the stake, or lose everything you have? When we are consumed with our own problems, we may believe they are the worst in the universe. The truth is, they are not. They may be of supreme importance to us, but if you look around, you can always find someone with worse problems that yours.

2. Develop Patience:

Easier said than done, I know. There is a time frame for everything that happens in life, good and bad. You may not find solutions to your problems over night. A willingness to allow time to pass is essential and could be the hardest thing to achieve but is one of the fist things we need to develop when faced with adversity. Solutions to problems come with time. Needlessly spinning your wheels in an attempt to hurriedly put problems behind you won't solve the problem, it will add to the problem.

3. Paying Attention to The Lesson:

Wherever we are in life, we are there for a reason. There are lessons to be learned from hard times. Adversity is not so much about contending with problems as it is learning more about what is inside us, about who we really are. Adversity can bring out the best and the worst in us. It can pull the covers back and show us our true colors. Adversity creates the ability for us to feel empathy and compassion for the human condition. If dealt with, with the proper attitude, patience and a willingness to learn it can give us our greatest opportunity to shine.

Viewing adversity in the proper perspective, not giving it more importance than necessary, and learning the lesson contained in it means taking control of the adversity instead of it taking control of you.
 

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