It’s been said before, many times, but it doesn’t make it any less true: adversity makes us better and stronger human beings. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:
A steady diet of adversity prepares one for both the low-level adversities of daily life but also for the metaphorical droughts and floods that push us to our limits of endurance and adaptability.
We all know the downside of adversity: it’s tiresome, and if it pushes us up against our limits long enough, it can break us.
If my life is any indication, some of our adversity is outside our choosing and control, while other instances of adversity result from our own decisions and/or traits. We may take risks with the goal of advancing, and end up with adversity. We may choose a difficult path and find it far more arduous than we could possibly have imagined. Or we may have experienced success from the start, and be unprepared for the adversity that inevitably follows easy success.
Longtime correspondent Matthew W. recently observed that humans share a core trait with other forms of life:
“Just like animals and crops, if you give too much up front, they grow weak, and being unable to stand any hardship, eventually succumb to simple problems that any normal living thing could tolerate. I see the same application in work. The one who must struggle ceaselessly during training flourishes when placed into a space that requires typical prowess, whereas those who are constantly led by the hand, require massive support systems to do even simple tasks, until their ineptitude ultimately bankrupts the company, leading to their loss of work.”
This is the upside of adversity: a steady diet of adversity prepares one for both the low-level adversities of daily life (Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, etc.) but also for the metaphorical droughts and floods that push us to our limits of endurance and adaptability.
What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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Headed For Decapitation