Friday, August 12, 2011

Day 362 - Adversity, Acceptance, Meaning and a Glimmer of Hope

None of us welcome adversity. We'd be foolish to hope for bad things to happen so we could learn from them or find a golden opportunity that would turn our lives in a positive direction. Most of us like it when things are on an even keel and we feel as if there is stability and even a sense of predictability in our lives. Some of us are learning that we can weather the storms of change with particular strategies and mind sets, but that doesn't mean we come away unscathed. When we are in the midst of our misery, it is enormously difficult to see the bright and shiny side of things and find an immediate awareness of how it can be changed to our advantage. Instead, we tend to rest a while in our pain and misery - not fighting it, but almost welcoming it as an inevitable result of an impossible situation. We lean into our sadness and unhappiness, releasing the storm within us and waiting for the calm to follow. Hopefully, we don't dwell too long in that negativity and regardless of how hard things have been. Eventually, we do begin to see a glimmer of hope and we begin to rise to the possibility that things can improve, and yes, even get better than they were before.

Acceptance is a rough journey. To me it means that I take a big gulp and allow reality to settle in and then I find a way to make peace with it. Railing against the Gods for my various miseries has never done me much good. Why Me or Woe is Me seem to be pretty useless positions to hitch my future upon. Why Not Me and So What get me out of victim mentality and make my personal power more accessible. I need all of me to be fully present when I am working through a tough situation. When I give in to lower emotions like sadness, anxiety, guilt, and anger I am only hurting myself. As I have mentioned before, those emotions are my signals that something really is out of whack and I need to pay attention. I use those emotions to fuel my actions, rather than let them reside within in me beyond their purpose of alerting me to a situation that needs resolution. Those emotions turn into fear, bitterness and hardheartedness if they stay too long and I don't want any part of that.

Each time I have prevailed over a seemingly impossible situation I have felt stronger and more confident that I am capable of weathering life's storms. When a new situation comes up I can use the confidence I have built from past experiences to lead me through the ups and downs of what's next. I feel more grounded and less like a victim of my circumstance now that I have the experience of successfully coping with adversity behind me. Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue are not life threatening conditions but they are life-style threatening illnesses. They creep up on us, taking one part of our functioning and then another until we wake up one day and wonder where the life we used to live has gone. We make adjustments, change some things, look at other things in a new way, all the while reconfiguring our lives so that they still have an abundance of hope, joy and meaning. Different doesn't have to be better or worse, it can just be different. That's where I am keeping my focus. I am in the midst of re-framing this precious life I have been given and I will never succumb to adversity. I will meet it head on and I will prevail.

2 comments:

  1. Wonderful article! This is the kind of info that are meant to be shared across the
    internet. Disgrace on the seek engines for no longer positioning this put up upper!

    Come on over and consult with my web site . Thank
    you =)

    Here is my web-site ... half price sky ebay

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMay 02, 2013

    This post is invaluable. How can I find out more?

    Take a look at my homepage ... world-cccam review

    ReplyDelete