Hello and welcome to a piece of peace. Your weekly dose of motivation and inspiration. This week, I would like to share with you on the topic of “overcoming adversity”. What are you made of? When the chips are down and push comes to shove, what lies beneath all the bravado and ego?

Life has a way of knocking us down in a way we never saw coming. Sometimes recovery from such a setback can be one of the most difficult things to do. I read somewhere a long time ago, that successful people in life are not people without life problems, they are people who respond to problems quickly and positively.

My friend’s dad has gone through a series of traumatic events recently. He lost his wife about 10 years ago to breast cancer. It was the most difficult thing for my friend and her family to handle. They battled the disease for a number of years before he lost his wife.

My friend was a young girl at the time and the loss of her mother was something that she could not handle on her own. It took the whole family pulling together as a unit with love, care and determination and taking each day at a time to be able to overcome that setback.

10 years later, my friend’s dad remarried. The pain of the old wife was still there but over the years, it became easier and easier to deal with.

One day on a routine trip to the doctors, they noticed a lump in the breast of the new wife. Turns out she was also diagnosed with breast cancer. The cancer was aggressively spreading and she had to undergo chemotherapy.

That was an even bigger blow for my friend’s dad. For months he would not talk to anybody including his own children. He felt as though he had been cursed.

How could the same difficulties he faced several years ago return? It takes a special strength to be able to move past such a difficult situation as the one he was facing. Whether we like it or not, adversities are one of the biggest hurdles we will face. As a wise man once said, pain and death are part of life and to reject them is to reject life itself. Learning to deal with and overcome adversity is what builds character and resilience.

Every adversity and difficulty we are able to successfully overcome in life serves to strengthen our will, confidence and ability to conquer future obstacles. It is only in our darkest moments that we see how truly strong we are. Adversities draw out our strength and unique qualities that are God given.

When you respond positively and constructively to your biggest challenges the qualities of strength, courage, character and perseverance emerge from deep inside of you. Through your struggles and challenges, it is important to remember one important key when dealing with adversity, and that is to avoid or resist it will only make it persist. Everywhere you look in the world there is one form of struggle or the other.

Whether we are dealing with floods, poverty or even terrorist attacks. Even within your own circle of family and friends there is death, loss and tragedy. Although pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. The way you choose to deal with your adversity will make all the difference in the world. Remember, there is a time for everything, and that adversity you are experiencing will also pass.

Happiness and joy is at the end of that dark tunnel of pain and suffering, all you need to do is to take that bold step to walk through the pain until it is no longer with you.

You are much stronger than you could ever imagine and always remember to be yourself because everyone is taken.

Much Love,