Approaching Adversity with Intention
Strategies for navigating the inevitable adversity of everyday life.
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Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before.
Elizabeth Edwards
We’re approaching the midpoint of January, which means we’re likely all facing some form of adversity.
Our time off from work is over, our New Year’s resolutions are already being challenged, and everything we put on pause during the holidays is suddenly clamoring for our time and attention again as reality sets back in.
As we ease back into our routines and face the inevitable adversity of everyday life, it’s a great time to examine how we can approach adversity with intention.
By default, we ignore adversity. Rather than thinking about how we’ll handle difficult situations, we hope they never happen to us. When they do, we’re blindsided and respond with a frantic and reactive approach instead of one with intention and poise.
No one responds to adversity better than the military because they constantly train for chaos. They spend all their time preparing for things to go wrong, so when shit hits the fan, they’re able to maintain control and accomplish their objective regardless of the circumstances.
To approach adversity with the same intention and effectiveness as the military, we need to learn the difference between adversity that should be avoided and adversity we need to embrace.
Avoiding Adversity
Avoiding adversity seems counterintuitive to an intentional approach to dealing with hardship, but not all adversity is created equal. We need to distinguish between adversity that is unavoidable or valuable and adversity that is avoidable or unnecessary.
Life is difficult enough as it is. We can’t make everything in our lives easy, but if we can make something effortless without consequence, we should. There’s no benefit to making our lives harder than they have to be.
The military uses the best equipment they can get their hands on and executes the simplest plan to accomplish their mission. There are no bonus points for using poor equipment or executing a more difficult mission plan. Facing unnecessary adversity doesn’t build resilience; it simply makes life harder and reduces the chances of achieving what truly matters.
We shouldn’t avoid all adversity, but anything that is unnecessary or does not serve a greater purpose should be eliminated.
Embracing Adversity
On the other side of the coin is adversity that we should embrace. Any difficulty that is unavoidable or serves a worthwhile pursuit should be welcomed, not avoided.
We’re not embracing these kinds of adversity to make our lives more difficult. We’re embracing them to develop important skills and become more resilient to ultimately make our lives easier.
Unavoidable hardship, like the death of a loved one, cannot and should not be avoided. These challenges teach us how to cope with profound hardship, fostering emotional resilience and a deeper understanding of life’s inevitable realities. Attempting to avoid inescapable hardships only prolongs their negative impact.
Some adversity is avoidable, but it is also valuable and serves a worthwhile pursuit.
The military doesn’t do humbling workouts every day to make their lives more difficult or brag about the difficulty they’re enduring. They are training to become more resilient and more effective.
If adversity serves a worthwhile end, we should seek it out.
The military’s mantra for dealing with adversity is “embrace the suck.” It’s a bit generic for our nuanced approach to adversity, but we can adapt their mantra to “embrace worthwhile adversity and eliminate everything else” to serve as a guide for an intentional approach to dealing with hardship.
Prompts
Are you more likely to embrace adversity (worthwhile or extraneous) or avoid it?
What is something difficult but worthwhile that you’ve been avoiding? How can you embrace the suck?
What is something difficult but unnecessary you’ve been engaging in? How can you avoid it?
Deep Dive
Option B by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
A practical guide for overcoming everyday challenges.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.
Kevin