Success Principles may not seem to make sense until you adopt a mindset that states defeat, adversity, pain, struggle, and frustration are critical to your well-being, personal development, and success.
Defeat is not the opposite of success but a critical part of it. Going back through history, you would discover that every individual greatness is because of what they have been able to overcome. They have profited from Challenges and adversity. Those who cannot withstand pain, adversity, and struggle cannot become great because they fall by the wayside.
If you can develop the mindset that there’s something good to be taken out of every pain, defeat, and struggle, it doesn’t matter how horrible it looks when it happens. Sometimes, step out of your pain and struggle and let it play out. Be a neutral observer of your own experience.
In the olden days of China, a young man had his leg broken. The villagers came to sympathize with the family, as the young man was going through severe pain.
In sympathy, the villagers would comment on how bad it was that the son suffered this tragedy. The father would respond, ‘only time will tell,’ and the villagers would be confused about why he would say so.
Then, the next week, the country announced that it was doing mandatory recruitment of young men into the army. And then, the villagers who commented on how unfortunate the young man was, turned around to comment on how lucky he was, as he would not be drafted into the army, thus keeping him safe. The father would respond again with, ‘I don’t know. Only time will tell.’
The lesson in this story is that the father was right in both circumstances. The broken leg that looked like a terrible thing turned out to be great, and the young man not going to war does not necessarily mean a good thing.
You would never know what adversity or pain would bring you, but the first step is to adopt a positive mental attitude, knowing that ‘all things shall pass. Thus you develop and maintain a positive attitude.
Every adversity, every defeat that you suffer, is not in its entirety a bad thing. It is an opportunity to see it as a seed. Seek deeper into yourself and ask why this is so and what you can learn from it.
You only gather through strength and struggle to overcome resistance, disappointment, and pain because you develop better skills as you overcome these things. You are becoming a better person alongside increased understanding as an individual.
Six things we can draw from adversity
You develop courage
A lot of people mix up courage and bravery. A brave person acts oblivious to fear and danger, while a courageous person acts despite fear and danger. They see and recognize danger, yet they are willing to go ahead to act. By constantly challenging your fear, you grow in courage.
You build confidence
Looking back, you will discover that everything that looks scary and fearful doesn’t look the same once you overcome it. Once done, you will understand that the fear and worry surrounding the obstacle were even more disabling than the obstacle itself. When you overcome obstacles, you build your confidence.
Adversity and defeat are terrific in helping you develop the skill of Self-evaluation periodically
When you constantly face challenges, it finds a way to lead you to the drawing board if you are a positive thinker. You will constantly ask yourself, ‘what went wrong?’ Every time something goes wrong, you go back to the drawing board to ask ‘why it went wrong’ instead of ‘why me?’
Increased Skill
When you come to a problem and you solve it, you become better skilled. You become better equipped to handle challenges and a creator of solutions. With the increase in skills, you realize that you have become adept at handling challenges, even anticipating and preparing for certain problems before they come. The increased skill is not just to react to problems but to be proactive in creating solutions to problems that you anticipate, leading you to innovation.
Increased Teachability
Teachability is the ability to be willing to learn and accept change. Before we suffer defeat and adversity, we tend to be very arrogant. This is more prominent in young people.
When adversity happens, you will find that you apply the brakes in your thinking speed. You start thinking, ‘what can I learn from this?’ no longer, ‘I already know this.’ With time, you will understand that things tend to go wrong sometimes, and it opens you to learning.
Peace of Mind
This may seem controversial but look at it this way. You would face a lot of turbulence. You find that it is all familiar when you ride the wroth of every storm, turbulence, betrayal, and treachery that has beaten you. When you see something similar, you don’t get panic-stricken, knowing you have conquered similar things and obstacles in the past. At times, you get excited at the challenge, knowing that you are up to the task.
Mechanisms young adults can use in handling adversity
The first step to handling adversity is developing a positive mental attitude. A positive mental attitude says that every problem is just a seed that carries an equivalent or greater benefit.
A farmer who goes under the scorching sun to plant seeds doesn’t have just the seeds in mind. The farmer has the harvest. So by adopting a positive mental attitude, you are creating a systematic process where your mind sees that the outcomes of adversities will always be better than the process.
The second step to take is to be deliberate in what you want. If you are intentional and specific about what you want, you find that the process becomes bearable and even easier for you to follow.
Most importantly, don’t underestimate the power of Pen & Paper. The pen and paper will give you an accurate description of the problems and the best way to solve them.
All in all, ‘Understand that every adversity and defeat you master becomes a valuable skill set.’
