You Cannot Avoid Adversity

Something that's just a part of life is adversity. It’s all of the things that don’t go according to plan, all of the things that are out of your control that are making things harder than they need to be, and all of the ways you feel like you’re being challenged in ways that you’re not choosing.

Our natural human response is to try to eliminate adversity from our life because it can be a source of stress, strain, and discomfort. This causes us to shy away from uncertainty, be more conservative in the decisions we make, and generally not put ourselves in situations that leave us vulnerable to the world.

But even if you do that the universal truth remains - You cannot avoid adversity. At any given moment adversity is 3 things: It’s here right now, it just left, and it’s on its way.

So what does that mean for us?

It means we cannot let adversity slow us down. No matter the form it takes - whether you’re living paycheck to paycheck and worried about putting food on the table, or you live a perfectly comfortable life - We must stand up to our adversity and direct it rather than let it direct us.

The best way to do that is to have certain standards that you uphold. Who are you in the face of challenge? What's your mindset around failure and shortcoming? How do you relate with tragedy?

When you know who you want to be and you commit to being that person, you then get to assert that into your environment.

If you have a project that you need to get done but you’re feeling tired and cranky... You can take action to reset your energy and be accountable for how you want to feel.

If you feel like you’re stretched too thin and people are making requests of you that you can’t fulfill... Honor your boundaries and enforce them.

Adversity is the stimulus and that stimulus will always be there. You are the response. Having clarity on the standards of who you want to be will help you to better manage the adversity. 

While life will always have elements of it that are hard, and adversity is here, just left, and on its way, you get to choose your challenge. And that’s what this work is all for - For you to get better about choosing authentically and wisely!