Why and How to Deal With Adversity

Adversity: [noun] a stroke of ill fortune; a calamitous event; "a period marked by adversities"

Everyone acknowledges that adversity is a force that reveals your inner strengths and weaknesses. But, everyone also agrees that they don't want to go through it, even knowing that it will, in the end, be a beneficial experience for them.

Why?

Because dealing with adversity involves struggle, effort, time, money, trouble and worst of all, pain. And we will do almost anything to avoid pain in our lives. When you are actually going through adversity, it is akin to being on a ship on the high seas during a storm - the rain is pelting you from all sides, visibility is pretty much zero - and all that you can do is batten down the hatches and hold on until the storm is past, and you can survey the damage.

Once the storm clears, and you can see daylight again, and take inventory of what was lost and needs repair or replacing. Usually, it was something that either:
a) needed to go, but you hadn't gotten around to clearing it, or
b) something that you were holding on to, something counter to your goals and needs, that you didn't want to let go of.

In either case, it was something that needed to be pitched overboard :-)!

During adversity, fear rears its ugly head. And, in acting from that fear, you can sometimes make things worse, instead of allowing events to prune unnecessary things from your life.

What can you do for someone going through hard times?

Be there for them. Different people need different things. Some people need to retreat, others need to socialize, others need to vent. Be aware of your friends needs, and try to meet them where they are.

Listen, really listen to them. Sometimes all they need is a sounding board to help them figure things out. Don't offer advice unless it is solicited (boy, I've messed up on this on big time over the years); they will work it out in their own time. What is obvious to you, is not necessarily obvious to them right away... give it time. Once they are out of the woods, to (ab)use a cliche, they will see the trees just fine :-).

How can you handle adversity better?

By preparing for it when you are enjoying good times. By building your habits and character so that when the storms reduce your visibility, you will still have a heading that you can point toward.

Your habits (eating right, exercising, practicing your spiritual path) will help keep your body and mind in good shape to deal with what's going on with the least amount of stress.

You personality habits will help you make decisions based on your integrity and principles, not just what everyone else is doing, or seems convenient or feels good at the time. In many ways, these preparations will blunt the force of the trauma of what you are dealing with, because you do not have to think about every single decision that needs to be made ... you will be following your principles on autopilot.

As Oliver Wendell Holmes said:
"If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it."

©2007 LaVeda H. Mason All Rights Reserved.

Why and How to Deal With Adversity

The Journey of Our Lives

As humans, our ideal lifespan is approximately 100 years. During that time, hopefully we will learn a few things on the journey that we call "Life":

- That we are all similar... we all want clean water, food, shelter, warmth and safety for ourselves and better than we had for our children.

- Pain and suffering is normal in the human experience. We do our best to avoid it, but it is part and parcel of our experience on the planet.

- Joy and happiness is also normal in the human experience. We do our best to maximize the time that we enjoy it, but its time is short and fleeting.

- Difficulties and successful times test and temper the strength of our character and personality.

- In difficulty - What kind of person are we when we are doing worse than our friends and associates? Do we become petulant, or feel sorry for ourselves? Do we feel that others deserve our misfortune more than we do? Are we jealous of those who are doing better than we are?

- In success - What kind of person are we when we are doing better than our friends and associates? Do we become complacent and arrogant? Do we feel that we deserve what we have more than others do? Do we despise those who do not have what we have? Success has its own pitfalls; many who survived adversity, failed the test of success.

The only thing that we can count on is that things will change. The only way that we can survive the highs as well as the lows, is to be content no matter where we are, or what we have. To develop contentment is to plant seeds of happiness in our lives that will bloom even during times of adversity.
©2007 LaVeda H. Mason All Rights Reserved.

The Journey of Our Lives

Bad Things Happen...

I've been asked why I write about when bad things happen.

Because, it is easy to be upbeat and positive and spiritual when things are going well.

It's when things are not going well that you find out how deep your convictions are.

Sometimes, you stand firm and do the right thing, sometimes you waffle, and sometimes you crumble.

And (this is the worst), the laughable thing is, that you don't always know what you will do. Or when.

All you can do is keep exercising your character muscles, and work on your personality and discipline issues so that when a challenge comes, your training will hold firm.

©2007 LaVeda H. Mason All Rights Reserved.

Bad Things Happen...

Some Thoughts on Suffering

Suffering is a part of life. Unfortunately, even if you do everything right (which, in reality, isn't possible), sometimes bad things happen. But, we can mitigate our suffering by keeping our mind flexible enough to look for the lesson, which is what this experience can teach us; and to accept that sometimes, life is not fair.

The thing to remember is that we do not suffer in a vacuum. There are people all around us who are also suffering. We have all had unfortunate experiences.

The real question is, do we allow the suffering to twist and stunt us, or do we use it as an opportunity for growth? And what is our attitude toward the person or people who 'delivered' the suffering to us?

Common thought gives us an eye for an eye. To hate, as we have been hated. The problem with that is that carrying around that hatred poisons our bodies, minds, and souls. We know this, yet we persist in doing it anyway, because it is not fair or right that the 'enemy' did [fill in offense here].

A different train of thought is to be grateful (yes, that is not a typographical error, bear with me here) for the person who hates you, the person that bothers you, the company that does not appreciate your business. What!! Why?!? I can hear you asking.

Because the 'enemy' gives you a rare and valuable opportunity to work on developing the character traits of patience and tolerance in yourself. Let's face it, it is very easy to be patient and kind (generally speaking) with the people we like, who are nice to us, who agree with us. The true test of our character is how we deal with the people who are *not* nice to us, who treat us badly, who ignore and abuse us.

This is not a 'be a doormat' train of thought. Balance in all things is the key here. Are we patient with the slow clerk at the post office window, or do we let our annoyance be known far and wide? If someone says something hurtful to us, do we give back what we get?

Or, do we stop, and think, and realize that perhaps this persons' bad treatment of us was not a personal thing, but simply something that comes out of whatever is going on in their head... so you don't have to get caught up in the negativity, and you can let it go, both with them, and in your head (there is no point in 'letting it go' with the person, and then spend forever angrily replaying the scene in your head).

Achieving this balance requires that you live with your heart, mind, and soul turned on, that you think before you react, and that you think about your experiences later on, to analyze how you can work toward achieving your goals of strengthening those character muscles. In the beginning, it is difficult, but the exercise gets easier with time and practice.

The other thing to remember is that should you decide to cultivate this attitude, you will be different from those around you. You may be singled out for ridicule, or persecution. But that does not mean that what you are trying to achieve is wrong.

I'm working on this myself; and while I don't usually vent my spleen at people who annoy and hurt me, I do have a tendency to turn it inward, because (I think) that I must have done something to deserve it. Which, was often not true, I discovered later. The offending person was going through something else, and took it out on me, the unfortunate soul standing there at the time. So, I wasted all that time being upset over nothing, when I should have simply let it slide out of my consciousness.

This writing is simply the beginnings of what I'm mulling over about this topic. I'll try to remember to post anything further that comes to mind, as I work on it.
©2007 LaVeda H. Mason All Rights Reserved.

Some Thoughts on Suffering