Spiritually Navigating Hardship

Something transpires.

Maybe you hit your head (like me), maybe you crash your car, maybe you have a conflict with another human. Life happens, and sometimes it’s extremely difficult to navigate the fallout. It can leave you cleaning up the aftermath, be that physical symptoms or emotional impact, for years stretching into forever.

I understand how life-altering major events can be from my own journey navigating the concussions I’ve had. Minor challenges are inconvenient, but facing a major obstacle that doesn’t allow you to bypass it shifts your views on life.

I can’t claim to be familiar from the perspective of having had the most severe injury, nor can I say I experienced a traumatic event in sustaining them. I never had to fight through learning to walk again, talk again, have never required surgery, didn’t black out, stay in a dark room, or spend time in a coma. I am endlessly amazed by the resilience of those of you who have experienced these tough things in life and fought through, growing as you do. You are deeply committed to your life and I commend you for that.

I do know how difficult it is to navigate a plethora of horrible symptoms that are invisible to a medical team, along with the ridicule and bullying that comes with it. I understand what it’s like to have the proverbial rug pulled out from under your life, watching the entire foundation you stood on yesterday crumble around you today. To have to fight for yourself, your body, your mind, but also fight the systems that are supposed to be in place to help and support you.

I understand what that’s like.

I’ve learned something through this fight. I used to think that what happened to me, because it was so terribly disruptive and life-shattering, was separate from the way life is supposed to work. An anomaly. I thought that what is supposed to happen is good and, contrasting that, was the bad we are forced to circumnavigate as best we can. In other words, that life should only contain what’s good and all else was bad luck or a cursed life.

The hard truth came with the most beautiful life lesson: We can never keep bad things from happening… and we aren’t meant to.

It’s mind bending, learning to turn towards what causes you such deep pain and say, “I accept you”. To look what you’re afraid of straight in the eye and, in doing so, find your power.

Why would you want to? Why should you have to?

I’ve been analyzing life’s meaning and studying personal development work since I was a child. I’ve allowed myself to be obsessed with figuring out who we are, why we are here, what is death and why do we end. That’s clearly a topic for another conversation — coming in my new book The Art of Being Human — but through my endless observation I have been lead to some beautiful discoveries through my own pain.

Life is a perfectly symmetrical balance of good and bad.

We need contrast in order for the world to exist. Plain and simple. If we didn’t have contrast, there would be no form and no material. There would be no emotion. No good, no bad, only monotone neutrality.

That’s not what we came here for. We were born here to experience the beautiful contrast between good times and bad as we test ourselves against the odds we are here to create and navigate.

All of your own decisions have lead you to where you are today. Many of other people’s decisions have impacted you along the way, for better or worse.

Whatever you have in front of you now, whether you’re at the beginning of a fight or towards the end of one, or can simply relate because you’ve been through hard times yourself, know that you are meant to handle whatever comes your way. Forgive yourself and forgive those around you. Know that it isn’t as simple as “He did this to me” or “It isn’t fair because…”.

You have the option to begrudge your situation and live in a negatively charged emotional state for a long time, or you can embrace the thought that maybe, just maybe, you came here to face this exact challenge… and that rising above and growing through this challenge is exactly what your soul needs to expand.

Choose to live in empowerment. Decide that whatever has happened, and whatever will happen, you will leverage as the most powerful personal growth opportunity imaginable. Then make it so.

If you don’t think life’s challenges are spiritual, think again. There’s nothing that can rock your foundation to the extent of altering your reality and way of seeing the world without being a call to go deeper and discover your inner self and what you’re truly capable of.

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