Overcome Adversity, Gain Strength, and Win!

By Erin Emmons

Everyone has gone through difficult times that are hard to bear. You may have lost your job, your money, your credit, be deeply in debt and have a strained relationship with your significant other. It is easy to think that you are the only one that experiences hard times and other people get all the “breaks” in life.

You may not have deserved your misfortune but it depends on how you react to these situations that determines the eventual outcome. You can decide to give up and die or you can decide to fight. You’re already in a fight; you might as well fight back.

Is it possible to gain strength through adversity? It is if you closely analyze the situation that you face. The great success philosophy writer, Napoleon Hill, said, “Every defeat carries within it the seed of an equivalent advantage”. This means that no matter how bad the situation is if you keep on in persistence and belief you can turn that bad deal into something that is just as good (or even better)as the bad thing was bad.

If we think about it honestly then it is easy to see that adversity really does strengthen us and doesn’t come to destroy us but to bring us new opportunities, i.e. to promote us.

I think back to some of my favorite movies and I see this truth played out again and again. In “The Karate Kid” would Daniel Laruso ever have become the All-Valley Karate Champion if the Kobra Kais hadn’t of beaten him up a few times? Definitely not! He would have gone through his life being completely ordinary and Mr. Miyagi and he would not have developed such a strong friendship. The beatings weren’t good for sure but that’s why Daniel became the Karate Champion. He wanted to stand on his own…and stop being a punching bag.

In “Back to the Future”, Marty McFly’s father would have never changed and become successful if Marty hadn’t accidentally gone back in time and endangered his own existence. That strong adversity of losing his very life gave Marty the very strong impetus to make things right again with the space-time continuum. In the end, Marty gets his parents to fall in love, saves his existence, and his father becomes a famous science fiction writer in the bargain. If none of that ever happened, George McFly would still be a loser and Marty would never have the confidence to continue his music career (and Marty and Jennifer would never have gotten to go up to the lake in the new truck!).

It’s much the same in real life. Analyze you current misfortune and see if it contains the seed of a great victory in your life. Maybe you lost your job and your financial life is in ruins. But perhaps you always wanted to be your own boss and have your own business. Not having money is a terrible thing and you can lose your home, your relationships, and maybe even your mind! But that hardship may be just the thing you needed to inspire you to start your business now. Maybe if you had never lost your job in the first place you would never have tried your business idea. Maybe you would have only talked about it from time to time but never did anything about it. But the seeming misfortune of losing your job and your money forced you to become creative and resilient. It was either that or perish. Don’t perish.

So, don’t give up! Analyze your problem carefully, determine what you can do to change it, be open to new opportunities, and think positive. One day you will win! You have to! But, only if you keep trying. Just remember what the great movie character Rocky Balboa said, “It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit…how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!” True.