Staying on Top When Your World's Upside Down

“Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.”
Sharon Lebell: A Manual for Living: Epictetus – A New Interpretation

Adversity has certain laws – and, as with physical laws such as the law of gravity – they apply equally to everyone. Understanding the laws of adversity can help you persevere through the inevitable challenges. Refusing to believe that they apply to you, that you are somehow exempt because you are a good person, will not change the fact that bad things do happen to good people, that adversity can be a life-defining event for better or worse, and what happens to you is less important than how you respond to what happens to you. Here are the laws:

Law #1: The rain will fall on the just and the unjust, and bad things will happen to good people - including you. Understand that adversity will come and be ready to welcome it when it does for the lessons it will bring, for the strength and wisdom you will gain from it, and for the people it can bring into your life.

Law #2: You must pass through the valley of the shadow, but you don’t have to take up permanent residence in the cold darkness. Life is a motion picture, not a snapshot - your trajectory is more important than your current position.

Law #3: Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times is defined by what you choose to see. Without the valleys, you won’t appreciate the mountains, and there are millions of others who would loveto have your problems.

Law #4: One door closes, another door opens. There is opportunity hidden in every single adversity if you have the strength and courage to search for it and to pursue it when you’ve found it.

Law #5: Falling on your face is good for your head. We learn and grow more from our setbacks than we do from our successes. When things aren’t working, it forces you to look at more creative solutions.

Law #6: Surviving adversity is a great way to build self-confidence, and to give you a more positive perspective on future adversity (if we survived that we can survive anything!). Adversity prepares you for bigger challenges and accomplishments in the future.

Law #7: What you’ve fought hard to gain you’ll fight hard to keep and vice versa - easy come, easy go.

Law #8: Playing the role of victim or martyr does not prevent adversity or make it go away, but it does make you weaker and diminishes your ability to cope and grow from the experience.

Law #9: Adversity makes you stronger by helping you connect with others. There is something immensely therapeutic about asking for help, even if the help you receive doesn’t really solve your problem. Perhaps it’s the therapy of setting aside false pride and self-sufficiency. Adversity helps prevent hubris, arrogance, and complacency.

Law #10: Adversity keeps teaching - it provides great stories for the grandchildren! Your setbacks can, if you’re committed to learning from them and teaching about them, be the source of great learning for others.

And the ultimate law of adversity:

Every great accomplishment was once the “impossible” dream of a dreamer who refused to quit when the going got tough.