A Challenge to Life

Today, I want to share with you the Napoleon Hill passage that I often turn to when I'm feeling down ... and it has made a huge difference.

Hill wrote it after being wronged in one of the worst defeats of his entire career, which left him wanting to use his fists (and "from behind pine trees with six-shooters") to get even.

But rather than resolving the problem physically, Hill chose to express himself creatively. The essay 'A Challenge to Life' was the result.

"I bring it to your attention," Hill said, "because it gives you an idea of how I go about transmuting an unpleasant circumstance into something useful."

We've all felt the pure rage when we're wronged by someone else through no fault of our own. But if we act on those urges, it would be a horrible outcome — especially when negative emotion is in the driver's seat.

We must look at the bigger picture. "The best revenge is massive success," as Frank Sinatra once said.

Hill recognized this and took the action that would give himself the best chance of success in the future.

Here it is...

"Life, you can’t subdue me because I refuse to take your discipline too seriously. When you try to hurt me, I laugh — and the laughter knows no pain. I appreciate your joys wherever I find them; your sorrows neither frighten nor discourage me, for there is laughter in my soul.

Temporary defeat does not make me sad. I simply set music to the words of defeat and turn it into a song. Your tears are not for me, for I like laughter much better, and because I like it, I use it as a substitute for grief and sorrow and pain and disappointment.

Life, you are a fickle trickster — don’t deny it. You slipped the emotion of love into my heart so that you might use it as a thorn with which to prick my soul — but I learned to dodge your trap with laughter.

You tried to lure me with the desire for gold, but I have fooled you by following the trail which leads to knowledge instead. You induced me to build beautiful friendships — then converted my friends to enemies so you may harden my heart, but I sidestepped your figure on this by laughing off your attempts and selecting new friends in my own way.

You caused men to cheat me at trade so I will become distrustful, but I won again because I possess one precious asset which no man can steal — it is the power to think my own thoughts and to be myself.

You threaten me with death, but to me death is nothing worse than a long peaceful sleep, and sleep is the sweetest of human experiences — excepting laughter. You build a fire of hope in my heart, then sprinkle water on the flames, but I can go you one better by rekindling the fire — and I laugh at you once more.

You have nothing that can lure me away from laughter, and you are powerless to scare me into submission.

To a life of laughter, then, I raise my cup of cheer!"

Your ability to reframe hardship into a positive — a gift — can turn your toughest challenge into your most potent fuel.

The next time life attempts to harm you, send it this challenge...

Onward and upward always,

James Whittaker

#WinTheDay

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