How to Turn Adversity into a Character-Building Experience

How to Turn Adversity into a Character-Building Experience

In our life-long character education course, we are presented with an un-ending series of problems to solve— otherwise known as adversity.

In the Lord of the Rings, the magician Gandalf and his associates are confronted with an obstacle in their journey. They all react to this challenge differently. Merry the Hobbit seeks further information. Frodo, the hero, reflects on his education. Gimli the dwarf turns to past experience. Gandalf draws on his expert training. The Man Boromir complains.

After lengthy pondering, Gandalf finally discovers the solution, and is humbled by its simplicity.

Adversity manifests itself in three forms:

1)Results of our choices 2) Results of other’s choices 3) Acts of nature. The second and third forms we have no control over, but the first we can do something about.

• A man who plummeted into million dollar real estate debt emerges from the experience as a teacher of financial self-discipline, helping thousands to achieve debt resolution.

• A woman who pursued the wrong career and failed in business learns to help others by drawing on her strengths.

• A young man harassed by a stalker develops a viable home security business.

• An entire family loses 191 pounds collectively by changing their eating habits.

These individuals found that adversity is a stern but effective teacher, who expects you to ask the right question. Not— “Why, me?”, but “What can I learn?”

But what about the kind of adversity foisted upon us by others?

An unbending reality is that we cannot control the choices of others. We can only control our own thoughts and actions.

• A man betrayed in business by his “friends” seeks no legal action against them, but forgives them, adjusts his career, and goes on to find great satisfaction working from home on his computer.

• A man blinded by a mining accident crosses the plains as a pioneer after his wife and two children died, then learned to play the harp and gladdened the hearts of others to his dying day.
• Ridiculed in his youth and persecuted in adulthood for his religious beliefs, a man remains steadfast in his convictions and leaves an unparalleled legacy of faith.

• Countless men and women in our day, devastated by personal or political tragedy, rise above rancor and victimhood to make noble contributions to society.

Success in overcoming adversity is largely measured by what we become in the process. Adversity forces us to ask ourselves the question: Which is more important— circumstances, or how we respond to them?

When life overwhelms us, we can take comfort in the words of St. Paul, who assured us that God would never allow us to be tried beyond what we can bear.

Gratitude is a Key

My mother would often remind us, “you don’t have to look far to see someone worse off than you are.” If we continue with that perspective in mind, then adversity will— not crush us with bitterness— but rather distill upon us an “attitude of gratitude.”

A friend once said that gratitude is the key to being really happy. Time and experience bear this out to be true.

At times our soul may yearn to escape the furnace of affliction to which we were born. But the thrust of mortality impels each to the battle front, and there is no turning back. And in the end, buoyed up by enduring obedience to gospel principles, we can emerge on the surface cleansed from the evils of this generation. It is all part of the eternal plan, and therein is the miracle.

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