Enduring Adversity
“Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.” ―
The word ‘endure’ tends to have a religious tone to it. There is a lot to be disliked about modern religion, but enduring through adversity is an eternal teaching.
I wonder where the idea came from that life should be comfortable anyway? Perhaps it is our post-modern culture that craves comfort over development.
Uncertainty
I’m not a huge Tony Robbins fan, but I respect his work. A quote I remember hearing from Robbins was as follows – ‘The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty that you can comfortably live with.’
A lot of what we perceive as adversity is just a poor relationship with uncertainty. How certain of your self can you be when everything around you is uncertain?
3 Ways Of Enduring Adversity
1. Acceptance – both of self and adversity. Fighting reality is the root cause of distress. Trying to mould experience into what you think it should look like, creates the friction which maintains all suffering. This doesn’t mean you should use acceptance as an avoidance strategy, but the state within which to operate while doing the work to overcome.
2. Write down the worst possible outcome in that instant. The reality is that even if the worst event imaginable took place, it wouldn’t be that bad. To be brutal (but true) – the worst thing is usually death, and at that point, there isn’t anything to worry about on the earth realm anyway.
3. Introspection and contemplation – The best time to grow as a Human Being is when we are put through life’s challenges. They are rites of passage into higher levels of being. As we move through these times, it is essential to go inwards, rather than focus on the world’s noise. What are you feeling and how deeply can you feel it? Where is the feeling coming from? Are there elements of your unconscious mind that can be healed here?