Managing Adversity

If you are in a challenging or uncomfortable scenerio, you have only 3 choices:

1. Wait for the event (scenerio) to change
2. Change the event
3. Change your response to the event

Let's start with the Option 1. You need to know if the scenerio is likely to change on itself. If not, this is clearly not an option for you. Some scenerios, no matter, how short term it may be, the answer may just be to wait them out. While you are waiting for the scenerio to change though, you might want to think about if you can go for option 2 - change the event.

The con with this solution is that even if you leave your current event and procee to the next one, you will still carry it with you. This is the time to wonder if you are perhaps part of the problem? Are you habitually trapping yourself in certain challenging scenerios? If relationships aren't working out for you, how much responsibility should you bear? Of course, most events are simply out of our control; there's nothing we can do to alter it.

Which by then, brings us to option 3, the most effective and self empowering option -Change the respone to the event. The advantage of this option is unlike the first two, this one is always open to you. You are the focal point. Strangely enough, when you focus on yourself, you have more influence on things outside you. On other words, when you choose to look at things in a different angle, the things you are looking at, change (or at least appear different) with your mindset.

We live in a culture which tends to lay blame on external factor for our woes - It's God, it's government, it's our superior, our co-worker, our parents, our siblings and perhaps even the climate. Anything it seems, except ourselves.

In order to stop blaming and start improving your life, you must change the meaning of the event, i.e change the response. Instead of seeing it as something that was 'done to you', you can choose to view it as a neutral event, nothing personal, or even a positive experience that you can learn something from. Change your language to reinforce this change of meaning. Instead of asking, " Why did this have to happen to me?" Ask yourself, "What lesson can I take away from this?"

By changing the context you give to the event and changing the words you use, you'll discover that you have the power to respond in any number of ways, and whatever way you choose you want it to conclude, not just the knee jerk reactions resulting from your past. You'll be able to choose new responses to old problems by breaking habitual patterns that have been limiting your growth and progress.