The 3 P’s of Adversity Training
Despair.
Disappointment.
These are feelings we all encounter through the ebbs-and-flows of life on this side of eternity. So how do we deal with the inevitable setbacks and adversities we’re sure to meet along the way?
After attending the Walter Hoadley Executive Men’s Fellowship Breakfast and partaking in some stimulating conversations, I recognized that there are three P’s when it comes to dealing with adversity - perspective, position, and power.
Step 1: Calibrate Your Perspective
Believe you can and you’re halfway there. –Theodore Roosevelt
The first key to dealing with adversity is by implementing a mindset of mind over matter by simply calibrating your perspective.
Charles R. Swindoll explained it best: “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”
We can’t always choose what happens to us because many things are out of our own control, but what we can control, we must control.
Kenneth Wun, one of the other Breakfast guests, said it plainly: “If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you can’t.”
The discipline of dealing with adversity requires mental strength, determination, and resilience. But more than those things, combatting adversity requires a fine-tuned perspective.
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).
Step 2: Establish Your Position
I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. –Jimmy Dean
Everyone is in one of three positions in life - in adversity, out of adversity, or about to enter into adversity.
The important lesson is: Wherever you are, don’t stay there. You have to keep taking steps forward. But be aware: Adversity is a natural cycle of life. It’s recurring. It’s waiting just around the corner.
But if you can learn to march forward through every adversity and not be over come by it, then you’ll quickly find the key to over come it each and every time –
Your position in adversity should be forward.
But more than forward, I believe we must be positioning ourselves upward because we are created to fly with our dreams and potential. And the only way to ascend is to fly against the wind.
Marching forward means marching closer to your next round of adversity. And that can be a scary thing to recognize.
Perhaps this is the reason many people choose to live in their current circumstance because it might just be less frightening than the prospect of some unimaginably more difficult situation.
But adversity doesn’t have to be a big, bad foe.
Step 3: Recognize Your Power
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. -Booker T. Washington
In order to get to great, you first have to get through good. Everyone does.
Do you realize that there are certain steps that everyone must take? There are specific lessons that everyone must learn in order to truly be successful. And the moment you can recognize the power contained within your adversity is the moment you can begin your journey toward success.
Adversity is what develops the character you need to sustain your mission and to increase your capacity for greater ones. It’s what will grow you, fortify you, and position you.
Adversity is power.
