Five Ways to Deal with Adversity

We had a lively discussion at our 2020 inaugural Coaching at the Corner coaching chat this week. The subject was how to deal with adversity.

A timely topic during the Coronavirus Pandemic, don’t you think?

But to talk about dealing with adversity, we had to first define adversity.

Starting with our old friend Webster, that definition is “a state of serious or continual difficulty or misfortune.”

Here are some of the discussion points:

True or false – you can’t prepare for it…
True or false – most adversity is temporary…
True or false – adversity is perceived differently by different people…
True or False – we should accept that adversity is an in that inevitable in our lives…

Given that our perceptions of what is adversity and what isn’t may vary, it will still exist. So when it happens, now how do we handle it?

These are the 5 points that I made during the discussion:

Perfect Present. In order to deal with adversity, we need to have our perceptions and emotions in the present. A coaching strategy I like is to believe that the present is where the only true control of your emotion lies. By embracing this concept, it enables us to attempt to manage our perceptions about whatever adversity we need to address. It has been said many times that 10% of life what happens to you and 90% is how you react and/or respond to it.

Make peace with the situation. With any adversity, the target of moving toward acceptance can help us get through it. Depending on the level of adversity, it may be that you’ll need to go through the 5 stages of grief to get to accepting the new situation. No one said it would be easy. By taking stock of what you have done previously, where you have been, what else you have endured, you can possibly enable yourself to get point of acceptance.

Go at it with “the heart of a lion.” In working to deal with adversity, your proactive approach can be very useful moving from victim to victorious. By believing in your abilities, trusting yourself, you can embrace your ability to deal with adversity

Purposeful focus. To continue to move towards the positive handling of your adversity, using the power of focus a real ally. Create a plan. Focus on moving the stages of grief.

Seek insights and find opportunities. In dealing with any adversity, they’re going to be lessons learned and new perspectives gained while this not be obvious, they can be the silver linings the difficulties with face in life.