Expert Feature: Want to Grow from Adversity in Your Life? Change Your View of It.
How the Civil War Made One Family Wealthy
Before the Civil War, Edmund McIhenny operated a sugar plantation and a saltworks on Avery Island, Louisiana.
Yankee troops invaded the area in 1863, and McIhenny had to flee.
When he returned in 1865 his sugar fields and saltworks were ruined.
One of the few things left were some hot Mexican peppers that had reseeded themselves in the kitchen garden.
McIhenny, who was living hand to mouth, so he started experimenting with the ground peppers to make a sauce that would liven up his dull diet.
His newfound sauce is known today as Tabasco sauce.
To this day, over 147 years later, the McIhenny Company and its Tabasco business is still run by the McIhenny family.
Do you realize this?
The tragedy of the Civil war and the loss of all he had were actually the greatest things that ever happened to him!
It gave him and his family a fortune they would never have had without it.
- What if how we normally see adversity is all wrong?
- What if the problems, the trials, and the pain that we normally complain about was the most important (and needed) part of our lives?
Today, I want to show you a different way for you to view hard times.
Frustration Comes from the Wrong View of Adversity
You’re trying to live your life and reach the goals you have.
You’re wanting to live out the dreams you have.
But you get frustrated because you keep running up against adversity and trials in your life. (*There seems to be a lot of this as a business owner.)
You start feeling that you’re stuck; that your life won’t get any better.
Do you know why we usually feel that way when we face adversity?
It’s because we see setback, pain, and problems as things that are always bad.
We think those things equal a bad life.
We think those things are going to permanently hold us back.
- But is any of that really the right way to see or think about adversity?
- Is it always bad?
- Does it mean that our life is bad?
To help you understand the new way we need to start seeing adversity, I want you to listen to the following story that Orison Swett Marden once shared in his book Pushing to the Front. He said..
Take two acorns from the same tree, as nearly alike as possible; plant one of a hill by itself, and the other in the dense forest, and watch them grow.
The oak standing alone is exposed to every storm.
Its roots reach out in every direction, clutching the rocks and piercing deep into the earth. Every rootlet lends itself to steady the growing giant, as in anticipation of fierce conflict with the elements.
Sometimes its upward growth seems held-back for years, but all the while it has been expending its energy in pushing a root across a large rock to gain a firmer anchorage.
Then it shoots proudly upward again, prepared to defy the hurricane. The gales that sport so rudely its wide branches find more than their match, and only serve still further to toughen every minutest fiber from pitch to bark.
The acorn planted in the deep forest shoots up a weak, slender sapling. Shielded by its neighbors, it feels no need to spread its roots far and wide for support.
The oak tree on the hill, that faced every adversity you can imagine, grew to become the taller, greater oak tree.
Do you see it now?
All the stress it went through actually made it stronger!
Adversity and trials cause us to grow. No pain. No gain.
If the tree could’ve chosen to live a life sheltered from any adversity, then it would’ve never become great.
If you could sit down and interview some of the great men and women in this world and ask them how they became so great, the majority would tell you that it came from going through trials.
That’s where they gained their wisdom, knowledge, experience which led them to greatness.
The Adversity of Exercise and Diet
If you want to become muscular or you want to lose weight, what does it take?
Do you have to cause yourself to go through some adversity in your life or can you just choose a life of ease and happiness?
You know the answer!
It’s the people that put their bodies through the adversity of exercise and diet who are the strongest and the healthiest.
And it’s the same for us mentally and emotionally!
We need to view adversity like person who is in really good shape views working out.
It should bring us joy because of what it does to us.
It’s only when we view adversity and trials in this way can we actually gain joy from it.
If an out of shape person views working out as something painful to stay away from, then they will gain no joy from it (and receive no benefit from it) if they go and work out.
If we see adversity as a bad thing, then we’ll never gain any type of joy from it or get any benefit from it.
Let’s face it.
If you live in this world, then sooner or later you will face adversity.
It will happen over and over. It’s guaranteed.
You’ll face different mountains that you have to climb throughout your life.
What I’m trying to get you to see is that there’s nothing we can do about the fact that life is full of adversity.
All we can really do is change our view of it.
This realization doesn’t have to be a bad thing, because we know that a life full adversity means a life full of growth.
But the only way that we can grow from the adversity in our life is if we view it properly.
I want to challenge you to reframe whatever adversity that you are going through.
- Look for opportunity hidden in your adversity
- Let it prepare you to withstand greater challenges that you’ll face
- Look at it as a way to grow “muscles” you don’t have
- Use it as a way to gain wisdom, knowledge, experience you’d never have without it
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How The Great Minds In History Discovered Solutions To Insurmountable Problems (baybusinesshelp.com)
