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Hardship And Misfortune Cause Adversity In Your Life?
What do you do in the face of adversity? Everyone faces adversity in life at some point. So you can identify with having experienced some tragedy in your life. And so, how do you cope with that tragedy? How do you deal with that tragedy? Do you allow tragedy and other negative experiences to create adversity? What are the methods, processes, and techniques you can use to help you through those times?
What Do You Do In The Face Of Adversity?
What Is Adversity And Tragedy?
To overcome challenges, it is often beneficial to understand those adversities. Here is a brief definition of tragedy and the different experiences you may encounter that can cause adversity. Just watching the news. It exposes you to quite a few types of tragedies. And the ideas they conjure up can depend on how safe you are or how you feel. Those negative news stories can cause feelings of loss, fear, anxiety, and even depression. Some of these can debilitate you.
There are also personal tragedies you can experience that can cause real negative adverse reactions in your life. Everyone faces the death of a friend or family member at some time. Divorce can also be devastating. In the USA, 40-50% of first marriages, 60-67% of second marriages, and 73% of third marriages end in divorce. Sadly, these kinds of tragic situations are not rare but relatively common.
Debilitating physical injury due to illness or accident are also situations that often cause significant adversity in life for individuals just like you. Yes, these things can happen to you. It’s a frightening thought.
Why Should You Be Thankful For Negative Experiences?
What do you do in the face of adversity when life seems to have you in a vise and is squeezing everything good and pleasurable out of you? You have heard the adage “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”? Well, life’s 
challenges can also make you happier and even more successful. I know that sounds counter-intuitive in a way but it isn’t.
The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology carried out a study that showed that individuals who have gone through negative situations end up happier and even healthier than those with no history of extreme tragedy or adversity.
Again this doesn’t sound logical. Think about it for a second. What is a flu shot? You are injected with doses of the actual diseases to allow your immune system to learn how to handle them so you do not get sick. This is true for other vaccines or specific antidotes, like those for snake bites. If this holds for your bodies, why not for our emotional bodies?
As a human being, certainly, you would rather not have to face trials and tribulations; however, it is inevitable. But isn’t it nice to know that when you do, there is a light at the end of that dark lonely tunnel? A great example of this is the well-known biblical ‘overcoming adversity stories’ of Job. He is tested by the loss of everything in his life: riches, family, and health. Eventually, he is rewarded.
Staying positive in the wake of negative experiences can be challenging to do. We all tend to go into victim mode when faced with adversity or life tragedies, or at least a “woe is me” attitude. Wallowing in negativity will send you into a tailspin of the same.
How Do You Overcome Adversity?
So you can have tragedy on all different levels in your life. In order to lead some form of happy life, you must find ways to soothe yourself and find the peace, love, and quality of life you are looking for.
Tragically, some things can affect you directly in your life, like someone that you care for passing away. You could get injured in a car accident or some other traumatic injury or abuse that takes place. These are the direct, tangible events that can happen in your reality. They are difficult to separate yourself from.
Then there are these perhaps more distant events that you see on the news that aren’t happening in your immediate environment, and yet you grasp a hold of them and take them inside as though it’s a personal, direct tragedy.
Believe it or not, you can choose not to involve yourself too much in those events. These cause negativity in your life. They can cause adversity to a happy life. The issue is you have no control over these circumstances or events. Sometimes, it’s difficult for you to process those negative emotions they can create. It’s hard for you to let them go. So what can you do?
In Pain – Need A Healing?
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Is Overcoming Adversity Possible?
One thing you can do with these more distant events is choose not to expose yourself to too much of that. You can control the negativity that comes into your life. Let me give you an example of how these negative events can affect and even infect you.
Here is a very simple little exercise.
Generally, when you are online or watching television, you will watch programming that may not be the most pleasant or positive until something that you find uplifting comes on. However, you will still watch the less favorable shows just for something to do.
Let me ask you what your all-time favorite snack is. A snack that you cannot say no to. Now, take a serving of that snack and put it in a high-quality, sealable container. Now, place that container into another high-quality, sealable container. Wrap it in entirely in packaging tape. Once again, lock it into another high-quality, sealable container. Do you feel secure about it being airtight? So let’s liken this to good and positive feelings.
Place this in your living room or family room. Now, back a garbage truck full of smelly, rotting garbage to that room and cover your wrapped and impenetrable snack. Then you watch someone in a hazmat suit wade through all the garbage and pull out that sealed snack. Would you unwrap it and eat it?
This example is like wading through all the negative news or programming until you find something suitable and uplifting to watch. You are choosing to allow negative programming to come into your home. It’s programming you!
Find Your True Center
You can learn to deal with the challenges that come your way. Even in the face of adversity and tragedy, it can become a great strength. There are ways to do this that may help you.
Here are a few ways to practice how to react in the face of adversity and live your life to the fullest:
- Stop Suppressing Your Negative Emotions. Suppressing negative thoughts or ideas and avoiding negative emotions will bring more. Feel it and let it go.
- Wallow In Negativity. The way to desensitize the pain threshold is to wallow in it. If you feel depressed, FEEL and ACT depressed. Lay in bed for the day. Allow your emotional, physical, and mental bodies to pass through the stage. This acceptance may seem counter-intuitive, but it can create resiliency and aid you in life.
- Be Your Own Hero. Depending on outside forces or people to make your life complete or better will only lead you to eventual disappointment. You may tend to give all your power away regarding your self-worth. This surrender puts the control of your happiness and ambition for success in another person’s control. Own your life.
- Cultivate Symbiotic Relationships. Surround yourself with like-minded people who will tell you the truth. These are the people who will help you grow. A “yes” persona will only placate you. Again, they will lull you into a false sense of security. You should not “need” anyone to help you be happy. Happiness should come from within. Be with people that feel the same. People who lean on you for their happiness are emotionally draining and can never achieve true happiness so failure is imminent.
- Resist Comfort. If you are searching for comfort in your life, stop. Comfort is the enemy of emotional growth. Comfort is like a drug. All you want is the next fix so you don’t lose that sensation. When you find total comfort in your life, you will die. This false sense of comfort happens to retirees. They work all their lives, then stop because they feel they have reached their goal. What happens is in a few short years, they are gone.
I met a mature lady years ago in her late nineties, and she was awake and alive. I asked her about her recipe for such a wonderful, long life. She stated, “My intention has always been to wear out, not rust out.”
Adversity And Spirit
You have more than one aspect to your nature. You are a human being. Yes and no. You are actually Spirit having a human experience. So you have a physical body and a Spirit body. You also have mental and emotional bodies. Your Spirit is your higher self, and the laws of physics, time, and space have no rule over it. Yet the other three, mind, body, and emotions, are subject to the laws of the physical world. And they are not what can be called ultra-resilient.
There is such a thing as resilience in the face of adversity. However, you will generally find this is true with people connected with their true Spiritual nature. This resilience through spirituality is quite fascinating when you delve into the subject.
People who are deeply attuned to their higher self don’t get as affected by personal tragedies like death, personal injury, and even worldly events. There is a deeper understanding of who they are in the whole plane of existence. Some people are more sensitive and empathic, and they feel pain for others, but they do not necessarily get pulled into the depths of emotional despair.
It is not about being in denial and pushing it down and saying it hasn’t affected you when, in actuality, it’s buried really deep. One thing you may hear often said is that adversity doesn’t build character; it reveals it. You could replace the adversity with Spirit, and it would hold true. Adversity is the parent of virtue.
Free Guided Meditation
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Overcoming Adversity With Spiritual Practices
One way to achieve a deeper relationship with your higher self is through meditation. As you meditate daily and connect with who you truly are, Spirit, you can reach a peaceful state of understanding and acceptance. The more that adversity drives you the more you can say that through adversity comes strength.
Meditation can also help you find spiritual internal mentors and spirit guides to help you along your spiritual and human growth. Look for those guides as you do your daily meditation. They can help you process and enhance yourself to really find the best you can be and become the person you are meant to be.
Meditation is becoming more commonplace, and it works really well. Some people say the effects of meditation don’t last, but it does last if you use it. Like anything else, if you don’t use it, it doesn’t last. You don’t meditate once and let it go. You have to continue on a regular daily basis to get the effects.
You Are Amazing In Every Way Regardless Of Adversity In Your Life
Remember always you are the light of the world and you deserve to be treated and treat yourself as such regardless of the circumstances. Learn how to stand strong in the face of adversity, even when it seems like the weight of the world is on your shoulders.
Regardless of your position in life, at some point, you will be faced with issues that will be challenging, to say the least. Wouldn’t you rather be prepared for these inevitabilities?
Join us on this episode of Unlocking Your Truth, What Do You Do In The Face Of Adversity. Regardless of your position in life, at some point, you will be faced with issues that will be challenging, to say the least. Wouldn’t you rather be prepared for these inevitabilities? Listen in as we have a real heart-to-heart with Christy Monson on the subject and for some valuable and sage advice about handling tragedy, adversity, and crisis in your lives.
Christy Monson is a licensed marriage and family therapist who has practiced in Nevada and Utah for many years. Christy is an avid author of some fantastic books that help people live their lives to the fullest. Her latest is ‘Finding Peace in Times of Tragedy: The Keys to Peace and Joy When Facing Crisis‘. The title speaks for itself.
You can find out more about Christy at http://www.christymonson.com and http://textingthroughtime.com
In Pain – Need A Healing?
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Other Relevant Posts That You May Find Interesting :
Suppressing Emotions Can Be Painful And Unnecessary – UYT088
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