Overcoming Adversity and Gaining Insight and Resilience

I had never fathomed that beauty existed in things falling apart. I watched tragedy collapse and crumble everything in my life. My family, home, school.. myself. “Things will get better” felt so faraway and unattainable. When? I continued to wait for that day, and it never really came. What did unexpectedly come was an entire change of my perspective, and it’s because I made a decision.

I spent a few years numbingly letting life pass by, releasing the last bit of control I had tightly been holding on to. I allowed my circumstances to define me and my environment to mold me into someone other than myself. I began to mirror the exact self-destructive habits I despised of in my family. The forecast of my life was consistently cloudy, and I felt forever unprepared for the casual family hurricanes that would take a piece of me. Reflecting back, the weakest pieces were taken from me in order to reform into something stronger, allowing me to build resilience. I had failed to realize that my life was not summed up to my current environment. I failed to realize that I had the ability to change the outer events internally, and look at the problems I was facing in a different perspective.

I was stumbling through life with just enough direction to take the next step ahead of me. I let life completely knock me down with no inner hope and motivation to pick myself up. The negative events swept me up in a tornado of self-destruction, and I dug myself my own grave. Anxiety and depression were shadows that were with me even on the good days. A chemical imbalance label and a set of pills were not going to magically fix my way of thinking. A simple solution to an extremely complicated problem. I wasn’t going to find happiness in a pill, I needed a prescription for clarity, stability, and hope.

The weekends were my escape; strong drinks stripped me of the damaging memories I never wanted to remember. I lost myself in the midst of fitting in and masking my emotions. As my troubles became more complex and difficult to handle, I felt overwhelmed and fed up with the way I would attempt to handle things that were out of my control. I no longer wanted to live life as a victim. With alcoholism playing a huge role in the destruction of my family, I decided to align my actions with my beliefs and I stopped going out every weekend. I gained back clarity that had a domino effect on other bad habits in my life. I began to focus on myself, and not in the typical self-destructive way I had before. I consciously began to tear apart and reconstruct my way of thinking.

“Never be afraid to fall apart because it is an opportunity to rebuild yourself
the way you wish you had been all along.”

For the last year, I have spent countless hours self-reflecting and learning about my own mind and behaviors. Growing up I was under the impression that life’s circumstances determined how I would feel. I never realized the power I had to control my thoughts, feelings, and reactions to the things that happen to me. I had wrongly attached my ego to the events that were happening in my life. I felt directly impacted by bad events and treated myself as a victim. I also never realized the huge influence my daily habits had on my happiness. By incorporating mostly healthy foods, exercising at least a few times a week, incorporating positive self-talk, my long spells of depression began to fade. Our happiness is complex. Thoughts, experiences, perception, eating and exercise habits, self-talk, all can influence the way we feel.

We all face adversity in our lives. The difference is how adaptive and resilient we are. I decided to make a conscious decision to stop playing the victim. I chose to no longer suffer, but to discover and learn the positive side of the bad events that were happening in my life. Adaptability is the backbone to those who succeed and survive. I have watched family members struggle to adapt to hardship, and it holds them back from being able to live their life. They are constantly living in the past and clouding their present with self-destructive habits.

I am thankful for the rocky roads and misled paths I’ve ended up on. Adversity has pushed me to learn and love myself compassionately. I have discovered new perspectives and healthy ways of coping with life’s tosses and turns. I will continue to work on tearing down the walls I constructed, and share myself and ideas freely. Life has an entirely new look to me. Full of vibrancy and possibility. I finally feel like there’s a reason I’m here, I have a purpose.

Adversity Takeaways We need to master a positive perception of hardships, learn to adapt, and discover how to ultimately handle them. We must understand ourselves before we can understand others. The biological and psychological aspects of our mind are deeply rooted to our abilities to cope and understand the things that happen to us. Life is short. How will we spend our time on this planet? Will we quickly bounce back from hardships, becoming a better person from them? Will we look for the positive in the ugly and unfortunate? I am continuing to learn the power of resilience, and the remarkable insight you can gain from the unfortunate circumstances of life.

I hope to continue to embrace adversity with an open heart
to allow it to mold me into who I am meant to be.