What Lies On The Other Side Of Adversity?

What Lies On The Other Side Of Adversity?

Our decisions and mistakes can bring difficulties.
Someone else's decisions and mistakes can bring difficulties.
Some difficulties randomly and unjustly find us.

It was not a wise decision I made

Age 34, I made a significant life change. Leaving Sun Alliance Insurance Co as Snr Branch Manager, I went to study at Birmingham University. I had a few Summer weeks at home. How could I take the organisation and planning skills I had and put them to good use? One day my wife came home from work and, excited, I greeted her with the news that I thought she could do the cleaning, washing and organising of our clothes more efficiently. What lies on the other side of adversity?
It was now my job do the washing!

Adversity takes many forms and seasons

• Misfortune, misery and trauma.
• Heartbreak, difficulty and trouble.
• Sorrow, distress and suffering.

These are signposts of adversity, a precursor to an unknown time of waiting. How long is this adversity going to last? Am I at the beginning, the middle or nearing the end? Not knowing where you are in a season of adversity can suck from your soul the one life-giving component that we need next to oxygen, that ingredient is hope.

Amy Purdy was a 19-year-old student who had just graduated with a job that would take around the world when adversity uninvited came into her life. Her TED talk below is captivating to watch.

• What seemed like adversity became an advantage. 
• What appeared like the end became a beginning. 
• What seemed like tragic became transforming.

What is on the other side of adversity – transformation.

We do not come out of any difficulty and continue the same path. It can make us better, or it can make us bitter. As Viktor E. Frankl says, It's our choice.

The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances. 

Ask A Butterfly About Adversity

Struggling is an important part of any growth experience. Ask a butterfly.

There is adversity and challenge in life. It is real and relative to each person. The question isn't whether or not you're going to meet adversity, but rather how you're going to greet it.

Bad things happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. We can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilised by the gravity of the loss, growing stagnant in adversity or resolve to rise from pain and treasure in the hope of what lies beyond.

Is that an easy decision? Of course not. It could be the most difficult decision of all. Where can you find hope? Some people find hope and purpose through faith, others don't. It's a personal thing. I do.

What doesn't kill you makes you better may be true in some circumstances but that depends significantly on our attitude to the adversities that come upon us.

What lies on the other side of adversity may be up to us, but it will always involve the transformation of some part of our lives.

Sometimes events that lead us bereft of anything but grief just happen for no reason other than happenstance--a car turns left instead of right, a train is missed, a call comes too late--and the real test of our humanness is whether, in light of that knowledge, we are ever able to recover. When we again find our way despite the inability to manufacture a deeper meaning in our suffering, that I think is when God smiles upon us, proud of the strength of his creation.

― Neil Abramson, Unsaid

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