“Never let a
good crisis go to waste”
(Anne Harbison)
Although I do not wish
hardship on myself, hardship often finds me, and when it does, I have a choice. I can treat it as a
purely negative experience – one that I should put behind me as soon as
possible and never think of again – or I
can actively seek to identify and understand the lesson that every hardship
contains within it.
For example, through hardship
I can learn about humbleness
(gaining a better understanding of my limitations), empathy (learning to connect to the pain of others), patience (absorbing the lesson that
things do not always turn out as we planned), and resilience (gaining confidence from my ability to bounce back after
the hardship is overcome). I most certainly do not have to be happy about
everything negative happens to me, I can use it as a tool for development and
growth. Things do not necessarily happen for the best, but I can choose to make
the best things that happen.
Find the lessons in
difficulties that you are facing right now. Look back and learn from hardships
that you’ve experienced in the past; you will not only derive important lessons
from reflecting on these challenges, you will also realize how much you have
grown as a result. And how God works in and through you all this while.
Don’t avoid learning from hardship,
Actively learn the lessons of hardship.
Lord, Give
Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)
References:
1. Choose the Life You Want: 101 Ways to Create You Own Road to Happiness
by Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD (New York: The Experiment, 2012) Buy this book!
2. The Handbook of Posttraumatic Growth: Research and Practice by L.G.
Calhoun and R.G. Tedeschi (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006)
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