Dealing With Adversity Quotes

We can choose to throw stones, to stumble on them, to climb over them, or to build with them.

For kids like me, the part of the brain that deals with stress and conflict is always activated...We are constantly ready to fight or flee, because there is a constant exposure to the bear, whether that bear is an alcoholic dad or an unhinged mom (p228)....I see conflict and I run away or prepare for battle. (p246)

I love to walk. Walking is a spiritual journey and a reflection of living. Each of us must determine which path to take and how far to walk; we must find our own way, what is right for one may not be for another. There is no single right way to deal with late stage cancer, to live life or approach death, or to walk an old mission trail.

People that hold onto hate for so long do so because they want to avoid dealing with their pain. They falsely believe if they forgive they are letting their enemy believe they are a doormat. What they don’t understand is hatred can’t be isolated or turned off. It manifests in their health, choices and belief systems. Their values and religious beliefs make adjustments to justify their negative emotions. Not unlike malware infesting a hard drive, their spirit slowly becomes corrupted and they make choices that don’t make logical sense to others. Hatred left unaddressed will crash a person’s spirit. The only thing he or she can do is to reboot, by fixing him or herself, not others. This might require installing a firewall of boundaries or parental controls on their emotions. Regardless of the approach, we are all connected on this "network of life" and each of us is responsible for cleaning up our spiritual registry.

The good news is that stress is not the problem. The problem is that the strategies that deal with stressors have almost no relationship to the strategies that deal with the physiological reactions our bodies have to those stressors. To be “well” is not to live in a state of perpetual safety and calm, but to move fluidly from a state of adversity, risk, adventure, or excitement, back to safety and calm, and out again. Stress is not bad for you; being stuck is bad for you.

By Fortune's adverse buffets overborne To solitude I fled, to wilds forlorn, And not in utter loneliness to live, Myself at last did to the Devil give!

I don’t want you to be safe ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong. That’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots, and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym; that’s the whole point of the gym. This is the gym.

Someone once told me that life wasn't fair...and they were right. But I don't think that life was ever meant to be fair or perfect. It's not the tragedy, it's how we deal with it. It's whether we come out stronger because of it. It's not about blocking out the pain or hiding from it, it's about letting the pain shape you into someone better than you were before.

In life, the question is not if you will have problems, but how you are going to deal with your problems. If the possibility of failure were erased, what would you attempt to achieve? The essence of man is imperfection. Know that you're going to make mistakes. The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does. Wake up and realize this: Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success. Achievers are given multiple reasons to believe they are failures. But in spite of that, they persevere. The average for entrepreneurs is 3.8 failures before they finally make it in business. When achievers fail, they see it as a momentary event, not a lifelong epidemic. Procrastination is too high a price to pay for fear of failure. To conquer fear, you have to feel the fear and take action anyway. Forget motivation. Just do it. Act your way into feeling, not wait for positive emotions to carry you forward. Recognize that you will spend much of your life making mistakes. If you can take action and keep making mistakes, you gain experience. Life is playing a poor hand well. The greatest battle you wage against failure occurs on the inside, not the outside. Why worry about things you can't control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you? Handicaps can only disable us if we let them. If you are continually experiencing trouble or facing obstacles, then you should check to make sure that you are not the problem. Be more concerned with what you can give rather than what you can get because giving truly is the highest level of living. Embrace adversity and make failure a regular part of your life. If you're not failing, you're probably not really moving forward. Everything in life brings risk. It's true that you risk failure if you try something bold because you might miss it. But you also risk failure if you stand still and don't try anything new. The less you venture out, the greater your risk of failure. Ironically the more you risk failure — and actually fail — the greater your chances of success. If you are succeeding in everything you do, then you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough. And that means you're not taking enough risks. You risk because you have something of value you want to achieve. The more you do, the more you fail. The more you fail, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you get. Determining what went wrong in a situation has value. But taking that analysis another step and figuring out how to use it to your benefit is the real difference maker when it comes to failing forward. Don't let your learning lead to knowledge; let your learning lead to action. The last time you failed, did you stop trying because you failed, or did you fail because you stopped trying? Commitment makes you capable of failing forward until you reach your goals. Cutting corners is really a sign of impatience and poor self-discipline. Successful people have learned to do what does not come naturally. Nothing worth achieving comes easily. The only way to fail forward and achieve your dreams is to cultivate tenacity and persistence. Never say die. Never be satisfied. Be stubborn. Be persistent. Integrity is a must. Anything worth having is worth striving for with all your might. If we look long enough for what we want in life we are almost sure to find it. Success is in the journey, the continual process. And no matter how hard you work, you will not create the perfect plan or execute it without error. You will never get to the point that you no longer make mistakes, that you no longer fail. The next time you find yourself envying what successful people have achieved, recognize that they have probably gone through many negative experiences that you cannot see on the surface. Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.

take the trouble you’re dealing with and use it as an opportunity to focus on the present moment.

Whether we are speaking of a flower or an oak tree, of an earthworm or a beautiful bird, of an ape or a person, we will do well, I believe, to recognize that life is an active process, not a passive one. Whether the stimulus arises from within or without, whether the environment is favorable or unfavorable, the behaviors of an organism can be counted on to be in the direction of maintaining, enhancing, and reproducing itself. This is the very nature of the process we call life. This tendency is operative at all times. Indeed, only the presence or absence of this total directional process enables us to tell whether a given organism is alive or dead. The actualizing tendency can, of course, be thwarted or warped, but it cannot be destroyed without destroying the organism. I remember that in my boyhood, the bin in which we stored our winter's supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small window. The conditions were unfavorable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout—pale white sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the spring. But these sad, spindly sprouts would grow 2 or 3 feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. The sprouts were, in their bizarre, futile growth, a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency I have been describing. They would never become plants, never mature, never fulfill their real potential. But under the most adverse circumstances, they were striving to become. Life would not give up, even if it could not flourish. In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with men and women on the back wards of state hospitals, I often think of those potato sprouts. So unfavorable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Yet, the directional tendency in them can be trusted. The clue to understanding their behavior is that they are striving, in the only ways that they perceive as available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming. To healthy persons, the results may seem bizarre and futile, but they are life's desperate attempt to become itself. This potent constructive tendency is an underlying basis of the person-centered approach.

I offer her that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow - the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.

Things can get tough out there. I am in no way saying life is easy and we should breeze through it like a fart through silk filter; we are going to take our lumps and deal with our own unique adversity. What I am saying is that in all the chaos, remember to breathe, remember to smile, and remember that the only time to panic is when there is truly no tomorrow. Fortunately for the majority of us, tomorrow will always meet us in the morning with a cup of coffee and a fresh deck of cigarettes, ready to crack it's cocoon and mature into today. So ease the grip on your moralities and be yourself. Fantastic is really just the flaws. Nobody is perfect - not you, not me, not Jesus, Buddha, Jehovah, not God. But the great thing is that you do not have to be perfect to be alive, and that is what makes life absolutely perfect.

The most dangerous extremists know how to dress up their childish values in the language of transaction or universal principle. A right-wing extremist will claim she desires "freedom" above all else...But what she really means is that she wants freedom from having to deal with any values that do not map unto her own...A leftie extremist will say that he wants "equality" for all, but what he really means is that he never wants anyone to feel pain, to feel harmed, or to feel inferior. He doesn't want anyone to have to face moral gaps, ever. And he's willing to cause pain and adversity to others in the name of eliminating these moral gaps.

I don't want you to be safe ideologically. I don't want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong. That's different. I'm not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots, and learn how to deal with adversity. I'm not going to take all the weights out of the gym. This is the gym.

This LIFE is NOT about a BIG house, VALUABLE things, a FULL bank account or a POWERFUL status. It’s about having a BIG open mind and heart that respects and accepts differences. It’s about VALUING your family, friends & being grateful for the little things. It’s about FILLING your heart and soul full of love and laughter, making the best of each day while you can. It’s about having the POWER to have a positive attitude and show kindness even when you’re dealing with your own adversity. THAT’S what this LIFE is all about!

The problem is that the strategies that deal with stressors have almost no relationship to the strategies that deal with the physiological reactions our bodies have to those stressors. To be “well” is not to live in a state of perpetual safety and calm, but to move fluidly from a state of adversity, risk, adventure, or excitement,

What’s her name?” I asked Mrs. Compton. “His,” Dad corrected me. “He’s a boy, honey.” Suddenly, everything made sense. “That’s why he’s so ugly.” The adults burst into laughter—very mean spirited, I thought, given that the poor baby was already dealing with the adverse condition of not being a girl.

Whether we’re overcoming adversity, surviving trauma, or dealing with stress and anxiety, having a sense of purpose, meaning, and perspective in our lives allows us to develop understanding and move forward. Without purpose, meaning, and perspective, it is easy to lose hope, numb our emotions, or become overwhelmed by our circumstances. We feel reduced, less capable, and lost in the face of struggle. The heart of spirituality is connection. When we believe in that inextricable connection, we don’t feel alone.

Well, the same is true for adversity and failure. No matter where you go, there's a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that's perfectly fine. The point isn't to get away from the shit. The point is the find the shit you enjoy dealing with.

Life is not always easy, or fair. Contrast is a necessary part of our spiritual journey in this lifetime. Self-pity, or feeling defeated, is not the way to deal with it. Stay strong and move forward.

Wisdom gives us perspective so that we aren’t discouraged when times are difficult or arrogant when things are going well. It takes a good deal of spirituality to be able to accept prosperity as well as adversity, for often prosperity does greater damage (Phil. 4:10–13).

I define personal power as a state of mind in which a person is confident he can handle whatever may come. This kind of power not only successfully deals with problems, challenges and adversity, it actually welcomes them, meets them head on, and is thankful for them. Personal power isn't the absence of fear. Even the most powerful people have fear. Personal power is the result of feeling fear, but not giving in to the fear.

After spending decades studying how people deal with setbacks, psychologist Martin Seligman found that three P's can stunt recovery: (1) personalization - the belief that we are at fault; (2) pervasiveness - the belief that an event will affect all areas of our life; and (3) permanence - the belief that the aftershocks of the event will last forever.

When dark situations arise, it is opportunity for you to reveal the leader in you. Rise and deal with them.

Mentally tough people achieve it by purposefully investigating their psyches and developing compensatory strategies that help them deal with adversity.

Sports teach us how to persevere. How to deal with adversity. How to become part of a single heartbeat that defines a team. Sports teach lessons in leadership, respect, and courage.

I think the best people, the ones who have reached the highest plateaus as human beings, are those who have known a great deal of adversity and have dealt with it and then moved ahead.

Dealing with adverse situations is difficult when you’re uncertain of the reasons you’re doing so. It’s hard to stay motivated to act if you’re unclear about why you’re putting in the effort.

What can I hold you with? I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the ragged suburbs. I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.[…] I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow —the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities. I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself. I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat. from “Two English Poems

That was the great misconception about men: because they dealt with money, because they could hire someone on and later fire him, because they alone filled state assemblies and were elected congressional representatives, everyone thought they had power. Yet all the hiring and firing, the land deals and the lumber contracts, the complicated process for putting through a constitutional amendment-these were only bluster. They were blinds to disguise the fact of men's real powerlessness in life. Men controlled the legislatures, but when it came down to it, they didn't control themselves. Men had failed to study their own minds sufficiently, and because of this failure they were at the mercy of fleeting passions; men, much more than women, were moved by petty jealousies and the desire for petty revenges. Because they enjoyed their enormous but superficial power, men had never been forced to know themselves the way that women, in their adversity and superficial subservience, had been forced to learn about the workings of their brains and their emotions.

You can't be an important and life changing presence for some people without also being a joke an an embarrassment to others. You just can't. Because there's no such thing as lack of adversity. It doesn't exist. The old saying goes that no matter where you go, there you are. Well, the same is true for adversity and failure. No matter where you go, there's a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that's perfectly fine. The point isn't to get away from the shit. The point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.

Gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.

Because here’s another sneaky little truth about life. You can’t be an important and life-changing presence for some people without also being a joke and an embarrassment to others. You just can’t. Because there’s no such thing as a lack of adversity. It doesn’t exist. The old saying goes that no matter where you go, there you are. Well, the same is true for adversity and failure. No matter where you go, there’s a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that’s perfectly fine. The point isn’t to get away from the shit. The point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.

Stand like a beaten anvil, when thy dream Is laid upon thee, golden from the fire. Flinch not, though heavily through that furnace-gleam The black forge-hammers fall on thy desire. Demoniac giants round thee seem to loom. 'Tis but the world-smiths heaving to and fro. Stand like a beaten anvil. Take the doom Their ponderous weapons deal thee, blow on blow. Needful to truth as dew-fall to the flower Is this wild wrath and this implacable scorn. For every pang, new beauty, and new power, Burning blood-red shall on thy heart be born. Stand like a beaten anvil. Let earth's wrong Beat on that iron and ring back in song.

The real test of your character is not how much you deal with adversity — although that will teach you much. The real test is how you deal with power. The only cure for power is humility and the admission that your power comes from luck. The small person believes they are superior; the superior person knows they are lucky.

If you can’t be brave in the face of adversity, at least be practical.

When you know deep down from within that you want to start doing better in every way, you have already started taking baby steps towards healing.

Motivation itself generally lasts about two plays—it’s highly overrated,” he said. “Give me a team that has a business-like attitude, a team that can deal with adversity when it comes.

She must, above all things, be just, not truckling to the strong and warring on or plundering the weak; she must act on the square with all nations, and the feeblest tribes; always keeping her faith, honest in her legislation, upright in all her dealings. Whenever such a Republic exists, it will be immortal: for rashness, injustice, intemperance and luxury in prosperity, and despair and disorder in adversity, are the causes of the decay and dilapidation of nations.

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer recounts a fable in which he compares human beings to porcupines. On a cold day, the porcupines huddled together for warmth, but, in doing so, hurt each other with their spines. So they moved apart, but in this way became cold again.

In the nineteenth century, Emile Durkheim, the founder of sociology and an early pioneer of the social sciences, ran a thought experiment in one of his books: What if there were no crime? What if there emerged a society where everyone was perfectly respectful and nonviolent and everyone was equal? What if no one lied or hurt each other? What if corruption did not exist? What would happen? Would conflict cease? Would stress evaporate? Would everyone frolic in fields picking daises and singing the "Hallelujah" chorus from Handel's Messiah? Durkheim said no, that in fact the opposite would happen. He suggested that the more comfortable and ethical a society became, the more that small indiscretions would become magnified in our minds. If everyone stopped killing each other, we wouldn't necessarily feel good about it. We'd just get equally upset about the more minor stuff. Developmental psychology has long argued something similar: that protecting people from problems or adversity doesn't make them happier or more secure; it makes them more easily insecure. A young person who has been sheltered form dealing with any challenges or injustices growing up will come to find the slightest inconveniences of adult life intolerable, and will have the childish public meltdown to prove it.

If you ask me, everyone is a little too interested in their children’s happiness. Ask anyone what they wish for their kids and they’ll all say they want them to be happy. Happy! Not empathetic contributing members of society. Not humble, wise and tolerant. Not strong in the face of adversity or grateful in the face of misfortune. I, on the other hand, have always wanted hardship for my kids. Real, honest hardship. Challenges big enough to make them empathetic and wise. Take the pregnant refugee girls I deal with every day. They’ve been through unimaginable hardships, and here they are working hard, contributing and grateful. What more could you want for your kids?

Objectivity means removing “you”—the subjective part—from the equation. Just think, what happens when we give others advice? Their problems are crystal clear to us, the solutions obvious. Something that’s present when we deal with our own obstacles is always missing when we hear other people’s problems: the baggage. With other people we can be objective.

We are social animals. We have to live within the society. So it is very necessary to have the right kind of relation with and attitude toward the society.” “Please pay more attention about inner value.
That is the ultimate source of happiness and success for life.” The Dalai Lama “You can’t know wisdom, you have to be it.” Ram Dass “Constructively dealing with adversities and bravely jumping educational hurdles can quickly fine-tune a person to Nature’s Law. We may look to saints and role models for inspiration but we are the ones who make our own effort, and then make our own progress. We may lean on heroes and deities, but the person whose hurdle it is must always do the final and decisive leap over that hurdle.” Tenzin Kharma Trinley

Barack went on to explain that “there was a voice inside me that I could hear that was true—a kernel of myself—this is from a Borges poem—sort of a love poem to a mistress of his,” one that Jorge Luis Borges had written in 1934. “He says ‘I offer you that kernel of myself that is basically untouched, doesn’t traffic in the trivial or the petty or is just there’” (a close rendition of Borges’s declaration, “I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow—the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams, and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities”). Barack told Weisberg, “I felt that. That sounds like god to me,” and “to me god is connection . . . making connections, and in that connection, that’s where I find god.

Because there’s no such thing as a lack of adversity. It doesn’t exist. The old saying goes that no matter where you go, there you are. Well, the same is true for adversity and failure. No matter where you go, there’s a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that’s perfectly fine. The point isn’t to get away from the shit. The point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.

When we send our kids to play organized sports—football, soccer, swimming, whatever—for most of us, it’s not because we’re desperate for them to learn the intricacies of the sport. What we really want them to learn is far more important: teamwork, perseverance, sportsmanship, the value of hard work, an ability to deal with adversity. This kind of indirect learning is what some of us like to call a “head fake.” There

People always try to make self-published authors feel insignificant. I have more respect for self-published authors, because I know the adversity they faced. They didn't just write a manuscript, query letter, and blam book deal. These authors had to do it the difficult way. There is no publisher, or agents, investing time, and money into making their book. Just the indie author's manuscript, own currency, and persistence.

On the back of her gratitude for the opportunity to talk and connect with her children, a powerful new insight presents itself. Although she can’t provide as much as some parents materially, there’s is no reason why she can’t develop their inner strength in a way that others will struggle to match. Dealing with pressure and having to think clearly in emotional situations have helped her today, both at work and at home, and passing this gift on to her children will help them face adversity too.

I feel too much. To feel too much is unhealthy. But an excess of sensitivity is the paint that colors the tormented castle of genius. All human greatness is pathological in origin. My suffering breathes life into me, more and more life, more life than I can deal with. It allows me to travel to places I might never otherwise have visited: places in the mind, in the soul, in the mythic layers of unspoken fears. It is the source of my secret strength. It is a strength of which even Nimue cannot deprive me.

how do you and I usually deal with an impossible deadline handed down from someone above us? We complain. We get angry. We question. How could they? What’s the point? Who do they think I am? We look for a way out and feel sorry for ourselves. Of course, none of these things affect the objective reality of that deadline. Not in the way that pushing forward can. Jobs refused to tolerate people who didn’t believe in their own abilities to succeed. Even if his demands were unfair, uncomfortable, or ambitious. The

First, it involves our reaction to stress. Do we crumble or persist? Do we give up or stay the course? Second, it involves our responses to our emotions. What do we do when we feel frustrated? How do we deal with our anger and disappointment when life seems unfair to us? Third, it involves our resilience. When things go wrong in our lives, do we dust ourselves off and get back on track or complain and blame others for our predicaments? Fourth, it involves our grit. When we face roadblocks to achieving our goals, do we press onward or concede defeat?

What he did know was that Elinor was very much like his mother: strong-willed and dominant, wielding power in a fashion he could never hope to emulate. That was the great misconception about men: because they dealt with money, because they could hire someone on and later fire him, because they alone filled state assemblies and were elected congressional representatives, everyone thought they had power. Yet all the hiring and firing, the land deals and the lumber contracts, the complicated process for putting through a constitutional amendment—these were only bluster. They were blinds to disguise the fact of men’s real powerlessness in life. Men controlled the legislatures, but when it came down to it, they didn’t control themselves. Men had failed to study their own minds sufficiently, and because of this failure they were at the mercy of fleeting passions; men, much more than women, were moved by petty jealousies and the desire for petty revenges. Because they enjoyed their enormous but superficial power, men had never been forced to know themselves the way that women, in their adversity and superficial subservience, had been forced to learn about the workings of their brains and their emotions.

One of the richest veins of truth is that found in the words of the Lord to Joseph Smith while he was in Liberty Jail. After Joseph’s initial prayer, which begins Doctrine and Covenants 121, the Lord answers, “My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment” (v. 7). We have all probably had enough experience with life and the Lord’s timing to realize that a small moment for the Lord may be quite a long one for us. His perspective is always focused on the eternal; ours is more short-sighted. One of the aspects of mortality with which we must deal is this: All of life itself may be “a small moment.” The necessary thing to hold to is the confirming belief that at the end of the small moment, our adversity ends. We do not go into eternity—if that is the required limit of time—or on with our lives trailing the stinging dust of past storms. The wind ceases, the air clears, we draw a deep breath, and we walk on. One of the Psalms, attributed to Moses, speaks beautifully of the Lord’s timing: “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. . . . So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalm 90:4, 12). We need wisdom when counting the days of our adversity.

Coopersmith’s study with adolescent boys indicates that children develop self-trust, adventuresomeness and the ability to deal with adversity if they are treated with respect and are provided with well-defined standards of values, demands for competence and guidance toward solutions of problems. The development of individual self-reliance is fostered by a well-structured, demanding environment, rather than by largely unlimited permissiveness and freedom to explore in an unfocused way. The research of both Stanley Coopersmith and Morris Rosenberg has led them to believe that pupils with high self-esteem perceive themselves as successful. They are relatively free of anxiety and psychosomatic symptoms, and can realistically assess their abilities. They are confident that their efforts will meet with success, while being fully aware of their limitations. Persons with high self-esteem are outgoing and socially successful and expect to be well received. They accept others and others tend to accept them. On the other hand, according to Coopersmith and Rosenberg, pupils with low self-esteem are easily discouraged and sometimes depressed. They feel isolated, unloved and unlovable. They seem incapable of expressing themselves or defending their inadequacies. They are so preoccupied with their self-consciousness and anxiety that their capacity for self-fulfillment can be easily destroyed.4

I tell them to recruit kids whose coaches report that they had tremendous work ethics. They lifted weights on their own during the off-season. They showed up early for practice, stayed late, and asked for extra help on their skills. They were leaders who helped push everyone on the team to work harder. And they displayed these traits both when the team did well and when it struggled through adversity. It’s relatively easy to be enthused and hardworking on a team that’s winning. It shows more character to display those same attributes on a team that’s losing. It speaks to a person’s mental toughness, toughness that will be invaluable in dealing with the setbacks and rejections that inevitably come along in a business career.

If we can't get rid of our fears and so many of them lay inside of us these fears tend to color how we view the world. We shift from feeling fear because of some threat, to a having a fearful attitude towards life itself....We exaggerate the dangers and our vulnerability. We instantly focus on the adversity that is always possible. We instantly focus on the adversity that is always possible. We are generally unaware of this phenomenon because we accept it as normal. In times of prosperity, we have the luxury of fretting over things. But in times of trouble, this fearful attitude becomes particularly pernicious. Such moments are when we need to solve problems, deal with reality, and move forward, but fear is a call to retreat and retrench.

The qualities of a successful military strategist will change from person to person, but there are a central few that all of them need. These include, above all else, strategic judgment, but also stamina, interpersonal skills and a feel for people; an ability to energize, inspire and motivate; the ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing; a degree of personal presence and charisma; a sincere love of servicemen and women; an ability to be tough when needed, but also compassionate when that is appropriate; fortitude in the face of adversity and the capacity to stay calm in the midst of chaos; an ability to deal with setbacks, missteps and mistakes; a sense of what leadership style is required to bring out the best in those immediately below, and also for the organization collectively. A great strategic leader also needs to be able to foresee how a conflict will end.

FEBRUARY 16 UNDERSTAND MY POWER AND AUTHORITY I USE ORDINARY people to accomplish My purposes. Your ability to overcome in spiritual warfare comes from My power and authority. Do not base your faith on how you feel; base your faith on My Word. I have given you the legal right to use the name of My Son, Jesus. His name is above every other name. Authority in His name is recognized by the enemy. You will be able to cast out demons in His name. You can bind the works of darkness in His name. Through His name, and in the power you will receive from My Holy Spirit, you will be able to do exceedingly abundantly according to the power that operates through you. Fear not; prepare to engage the enemy. EPHESIANS 6:10–12; LUKE 10:19; ACTS 1:8 Prayer Declaration Father, through Your power and authority I will confront the powers of darkness. In Your Son’s name I will defeat Satan and all his demonic warriors. You have given me the ability to endure and withstand hardship, adversity, and stress. I will be persistent in dealing with the enemy, and because of who I am in You I will be victorious.

The good news is that positive construal can be taught. “We can make ourselves more or less vulnerable by how we think about things,” Bonanno said. In research at Columbia, the neuroscientist Kevin Ochsner has shown that teaching people to think of stimuli in different ways—to reframe them in positive terms when the initial response is negative, or in a less emotional way when the initial response is emotionally “hot”—changes how they experience and react to the stimulus. You can train people to better regulate their emotions, and the training seems to have lasting effects. Training people to change their explanatory styles from internal to external (“Bad events aren’t my fault”), from global to specific (“This is one narrow thing rather than a massive indication that something is wrong with my life”), and from permanent to impermanent (“I can change the situation, rather than assuming it’s fixed”) made them more psychologically successful and less prone to depression. The same goes for locus of control: not only is a more internal locus tied to perceiving less stress and performing better but changing your locus from external to internal leads to positive changes in both psychological well-being and objective work performance. The cognitive skills that underpin resilience, then, seem like they can indeed be learned over time, creating resilience where there was none. Unfortunately, the opposite may also be true. “We can become less resilient, or less likely to be resilient,” Bonanno says. “We can create or exaggerate stressors very easily in our own minds. That’s the danger of the human condition.” Human beings are capable of worry and rumination: we can take a minor thing, blow it up in our heads, run through it over and over, and drive ourselves crazy until we feel like that minor thing is the biggest thing that ever happened. In a sense, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Frame adversity as a challenge, and you become more flexible and able to deal with it, move on, learn from it, and grow. Focus on it, frame it as a threat, and a potentially traumatic event becomes an enduring problem; you become more inflexible, and more likely to be negatively affected.

45. No Plan Survives First Contact With The Enemy No matter how well you have prepared for something in advance - whether it’s an expedition, an exam, a marriage or a race - when you find yourself in the thick of the action, however good your plan, things happen. Adventure is unpredictable, and you had better learn to be flexible and to swing with the punches, or you will get beaten - it’s as simple as that. Mike Tyson famously once said: ‘Everyone has a plan…until they get punched in the face!’ If the adventure is an exciting one, you can bet your bottom dollar you will get hit by the occasional punch in the face. So prepare for the unexpected, and remember that forewarned is forearmed. Knowing that things will and do go wrong in the heat of battle is actually half the battle. It means that when it happens you are ready for it - you can react fast, stay nimble and you can survive the barrage. We used to say in the military that when things took a turn for the worse you have to ‘improvise, adapt and overcome.’ IAO. It is a good one to remember. It gives us a road map to deal with the unexpected. Being caught out, being caught off guard often makes people freeze - it is a human reaction to shock. But freezing can cost you the edge. So learn to anticipate the unexpected, and when it happens, smile to yourself and treat it as a solid marker that you are doing something right on your road to success. If nothing ever goes wrong then you haven’t been ambitious enough! I also like to say that the real adventure begins in earnest when things go a little bit wrong. It is only then that you get to pit yourself against the worst the wild has to throw at you. When all is going to plan, with all the kit working perfectly and the weather benign, then it isn’t really a test of character. It is easy to be the hero when all is going your way. But when it all goes wrong and life feels like a battle, it is then that we can see what sort of people we have around us. It is only through the hardships that our character becomes forged. Without struggle there can be no growth - physically or emotionally. So embrace the unexpected, feed off it, train yourself to be a master of the curve ball, and you will have built yourself another solid ‘character’ rung on the ladder to success.

Life deals us an abundance of obstacles and adversities and so, one would think, the mere passage of time would teach us how to profitably deal with the challenges that cross our path. But time only teaches the willing, and therefore many of us are sorely unprepared for life. One of the main culprits for this weakness in the modern day is the proliferation of a victim mentality. Being a victim is now looked upon as a badge of honor. But if we wish to flourish and become what Nietzsche called “the true helmsman of our existence” (Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations), we need to separate ourselves from this powerless spirit of the age, assume responsibility for our life, and learn to face up to what is presented to us. To achieve this feat psychological resilience is crucial. We must learn how to emerge from the challenges of life not weaker and more apathetic, as the perpetual victim does, but stronger and wiser.

Developmental psychology has long argued something similar: that protecting people from problems or adversity doesn’t make them happier or more secure; it makes them more easily insecure. A young person who has been sheltered from dealing with any challenges or injustices growing up will come to find the slightest inconveniences of adult life intolerable, and will have the childish public meltdown to prove it.

Life deals us an abundance of obstacles and adversities and so, one would think, the mere passage of time would teach us how to profitably deal with the challenges that cross our path. But time only teaches the willing, and therefore many of us are sorely unprepared for life. One of the main culprits for this weakness in the modern day is the proliferation of a victim mentality. Being a victim is now looked upon as a badge of honor. But if we wish to flourish and become what Nietzsche called “the true helmsman of our existence” (Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations), we need to separate ourselves from this powerless spirit of the age, assume responsibility for our life, and learn to face up to what is presented to us.

Emotional resilience is a protective factor against the development of stress, anxiety and depression, while also contributing to reduced sickness days within employment due to employees being more adept in managing adversity. Resilient individuals have more effective coping strategies in dealing with life and challenging events such as a bereavement or loss of a relationship, job or role. Consequently, they are more likely to maintain performance during adversity. Emotional resilience contributes to healthy behaviours, higher qualifications and skills, better employment, better mental well being, and quicker recovery from illness, which can also provide organisations with a competitive edge.

Developmental psychology has long argued something similar: that protecting people from problems or adversity doesn’t make them happier or more secure; it makes them more easily insecure. A young person who has been sheltered from dealing with any challenges or injustices growing up will come to find the slightest inconveniences of adult life intolerable, and will have the childish public meltdown to prove

While I knew all too well that poor communities experienced higher doses of adversity and had fewer resources to deal with it, I was worried that the issue was being framed as a “poor-people problem” or a “black-and-brown problem.

We all have the opportunity to do amazing things in this life, and we also get down at times. If at any time you or anyone you know is dealing with adversity or struggles in life that are too difficult to bear, please reach out and ask for help. It’s the biggest gift you could give yourself or someone you care for.

By ‘strength’, in the context of forgiveness, we mean the ability to resist being moved or broken by an external force, coupled with ‘strength of character’ - the quality that allows someone to deal with problems in a determined and effective way. When we talk about ‘strong people’, we mean people exhibiting character and inner fortitude to cope with just about anything that life decides to throw at them. Even strong people can find themselves broken by events and happenings from time to time, but their strength of character tends to pull them through in the end. In fact, strong people often look positively at challenges that they have overcome.

you’re afraid of it. The good news is, you’re a part of the human race. And humans have never been and will never be short on it. No matter their credentials, humans are the most resilient animals to ever wear Levi’s. We have been dealing with it since saber-tooth tigers were a problem. Yet somehow we have always found a way, day-in and day-out, to deal with it. Whether it is big or small, our innate resilience is really extraordinary. Maybe our most extraordinary quality. I want to reassure you that even though we might not like it, we’re built to deal with it. And that your it builds character.

The good news is, you’re a part of the human race. And humans have never been and will never be short on it. No matter their credentials, humans are the most resilient animals to ever wear Levi’s. We have been dealing with it since saber-tooth tigers were a problem. Yet somehow we have always found a way, day-in and day-out, to deal with it. Whether it is big or small, our innate resilience is really extraordinary. Maybe our most extraordinary quality. I want to reassure you that even though we might not like it, we’re built to deal with it. And that your it builds character.

Even if it looks like it does for other people, it almost always took years of work for someone to reach that moment or put themselves in a position for something to happen. It takes time for trees to bear fruit. It takes time for plans to come together. It takes time to learn and pivot after each attempt. Your ability to succeed and accomplish your goals is directly dependent on your ability to deal with adversity and time.

Roger that" is a ticket back to your life, no matter what happens. You may be laid off, run down, flunked out, cut, or dumped. You could be a stressed-out, bullied young kid, an overweight veteran with no prospects, or simply handed a pair of crutches and told to sit tight on the sidelines for as long as it takes to heal. The answer is always "Roger-fucking-that." Scream it out loud. Tell them all that you heard what they had to say and that they can expect your very best in return. And don't forget to smile. A smile reminds them that you are most dangerous when you're cornered. That is how you respond to a setback. It's the most efficient way to deal with adversity and come out clean. p204

Political extremists, because they are intractable and impossible to bargain with, are, by definition, childish. They’re a bunch of fucking babies. Extremists want the world to be a certain way, and they refuse to acknowledge any interests or values outside their own. They refuse to negotiate. They refuse to appeal to a higher virtue or principle above their own selfish desires. And they cannot be trusted to follow through on the expectations of others. They are also unabashedly authoritarian because, as children, they are desperate for an all-powerful parent to come and make everything “all right.”40 The most dangerous extremists know how to dress up their childish values in the language of transaction or universal principle. A right-wing extremist will claim she desires “freedom” above all else and that she’s willing to make sacrifices for that freedom. But what she really means is that she wants freedom from having to deal with any values that do not map onto her own. She wants freedom from having to deal with change or the marginalization of other people. Therefore, she’s willing to limit and destroy the freedom of others in the name of her own freedom.41 Extremists on the left play the same game, the only thing that changes is the language. A leftie extremist will say that he wants “equality” for all, but what he really means is that he never wants anyone to feel pain, to feel harmed, or to feel inferior. He doesn’t want anyone to have to face moral gaps, ever. And he’s willing to cause pain and adversity to others in the name of eliminating those moral gaps. Extremism, on both the right and the left, has become more politically prominent across the world in the past few decades.42 Many smart people have suggested many complicated and overlapping explanations for this. And there likely are many complicated and overlapping reasons.43

Given this obvious objection, a more nuanced understanding of the seemingly less prudential approach is perhaps in order. The idea behind the words of Jesus and Seneca is presumably not that we should eschew future planning entirely; after all, some of Jesus’s best-known parables, which describe activities like manuring a fig tree, or repairing garments to make them durable, seem to applaud forward-looking prudence. The key idea is, rather, that we should cultivate habits of mind which make us less attached to things we may well lose, especially material possessions. We will then be less anxious in the present, and better prepared to deal with adversity when it comes. That is how they connect simplicity to serenity.

Stay Positive It’s easy to be positive when everything in life is going great. The hard part is staying positive when you get knocked down and kicked around. The fact is, no one goes through life untested. If you study history, sports, and business, you will find that every great leader and team had to overcome adversity and challenges to define themselves and their success

When you’re Thoughtfully Fit and life feels easier, this doesn’t mean life is easier. Bad things will still happen. Relationships will challenge you. Crises will hit. Adversity will strike. People problems will still be there. But training to be Thoughtfully Fit makes it easier to deal with these challenges and handle them right the first time.

He rejected the Untruth of Fragility and turned safetyism on its head: I don’t want you to be safe ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong. That’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots, and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym; that’s the whole point of the gym. This is the gym.

Let me be just and true in all my dealings. Let no mean or low thought have a moments place in my mind. Let my motives be transparent to all. Let my word be my bond. Let me take no unchivalrous advantage of anybody. Let me be generous in my judgment of others. Let me be disinterested in my own opinions. Let me be loyal to my friend and magnanimous to my opponents. Let me face adversity with courage. Let me not ask or expect too much for myself.