Tested in Tough Times

Tested in tough times. People hate tests, but people love tested things. I have seen tough times before. And I fully aware I will meet them again. The good news is every time you meet with tough times they grow a little less scary. They grow less powerful and each time your confidence grows a foot taller and your determination becomes more focuses, intentional, and stronger. That is why I can meet with the current circumstances with confidence and positivity. Confidence that we will get through this one too and positivity that we will be stronger and more united than ever before.

Tough times don’t last, tough people do.

A Common Enemy

We grow closer to people by relating with them about struggles and about pain points or shared challenges. Currently, most of us are facing similar and difficult situations. Many schools, businesses, and services are closes. Many sports are canceled or delayed. Many that are able, are working remotely, homeschooling, furloughed and even unemployed. Some of us are even asked to shelter in place as a response to yet another Coronavirus outbreak.

Coronavirus is the same deadly class of viruses also known for the swine flu, bird flu, SARS and MERs. We are fighting an invisible enemy. We have an opportunity to show kindness and mutual aid and benefit in the midst of this fearful hour. We have the opportunity to help out our neighbors and at-risk elderly population. The question is will we be too concentrated on ourselves or will we look beyond our circumstances and consider the needs of others?

We who live in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offered sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one owns way.

– Dr. Viktor E. Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning.”

New Podcast Appearance

I was recently brought on Doc G’s Earn & Invest podcast (formerly known as the What’s Up Next podcast) sharing my story of how I was tested by difficult times. I got to share some of the background on why I can remain so calm, confident, and positive in these tough times we all face now.

Earn & Invest – Episode 89: Tested – Physically, Emotionally, Mentally, Spiritually, and Especially Financially.

How to Bring Purpose to Pain

We draw closer to each other by sharing our burdens and our struggle with each other. We learn to rely on each other for advice and compassion in difficult times. We offer to share the load when one of us is overburdened. We learn Rather than lingering in the victim mentality we can choose to let struggle draw us closer to those around us.

The highest and best use of painful experiences or tough times is to share those experiences with others for their benefit and encouragement. Sharing and compassionately helping others through their tough times is what brings purpose to pain. Since you have gone through it you might as well allow others to benefit from it.

The Way Out

The only way out is to push through the pain, so, we might as well use what was meant for our destruction for others’ benefit. We all have difficult experiences sooner or later in life. If we are going to have to push through it let’s push through it with the biggest team we can gather around us. You can’t do life alone.

We can’t control the storms, but we can make sure the those storms dont control us.

Life’s Best Teacher

When we are weighed down with affliction or failure it is not to disadvantage us but rather to help us discover our mission. To burn off the weakness that clouds our path and leave a core of determination to press on.  learn from it and be blessed by the lessons of overcoming struggle. Consider your affliction a faithful teacher here to toughen you up. Consider your struggles as a tough coach at the gym there to make you stronger. Let it build the confidence necessary for the greater challenges yet to come.

Sharing our pain points is what makes us human it’s what makes us relate to each other to makes us understand the struggle and it’s our greatest teacher. Patiently endure hardships of every kind for our deepest pain often yield’s the greatest of life’s lessons.

Credibility

Who can better understand the afflictions of a struggling veteran than another veteran? Who can better understand addiction than a former addict? Who can better understand overcoming adversity than someone who has endured it?

Your successes in life don’t give you credibility, your suffering and things that you overcome give you credibility.

Who can you better relate to? Somebody that stands before you and tells you which ivy league school they were educated at? What awards they received? What prestigious firms they have been employed by? Or somebody that shows you the difficulties that they’ve struggled with in life and shares with you the payment of tears, sweat, and blood that they have paid?

How We Learn Best

How many people do you know that have a fantastic life, job, marriage, kids, and home have profound wisdom to share from those joys they have built? Now think of how many people are at some of the lowest points in their life, struggling and relying on others for strength beyond their own. They Discover deeper purpose and meaning, they understand lessons that would have never been unlocked had they not been drawn down to that place?

How do you make your pain purpose-driven? Simply by having the courage to speak about it. By sharing with others being authentic about it. By not being afraid or ashamed to share stories of failure because failure is where we learn. If you think about failure there is no failure there is only success or profound lessons as long as you get back up and apply what you have learned.

To share and connect with others there’s no better healing for pain and to assign the purpose to teach people beyond yourself. Your past does not define you, it refines you. Your past got you to where you are. From here, you can choose to go anywhere you want to be.

Earn & Invest – Episode 89: Tested – Physically, Emotionally, Mentally, Spiritually, and Especially Financially.

Keep the FIRE burning my friends.

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