Are You Facing Adversity

Are you facing adversity? That’s an interesting question. It implies first, that you’re in the midst of a tough time in your life; and second, that you’re not ignoring it or running away from it, but that you have turned your face into the storm, so to speak. So let me ask it again, are you facing adversity?
I have spent much of my working life helping people who have been in the midst of many kinds of adversity and I have experienced my share of adversity. Together, these experiences have given me the opportunity to notice what helps and what doesn’t when people are in tough times. It appears to me that facing adversity successfully includes these five actions or processes:
1. Face it
2. Get your feet under you
3. Clean up the mess
4. Cope with the fallout
5. Dig for the deeper meaning and the hidden benefit

Featured Quote

Compassion begins with the acceptance of what is most human in ourselves, what is most capable of suffering. In attending to our own capacity to suffer, we can uncover a simple and profound connection between our own vulnerability and the vulnerability in all others. Experiencing this allows us to find an instinctive kindness toward life which is the foundation of all compassion and genuine service.

— Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, My Grandfather’s Blessings