Stop Complaining, Start Living

The one thing that irritates me is someone who keeps complaining and complaining about how rotten life is, how unfair life is, blah, blah blah. I feel like snapping back, “Who ever told you life was going to be fair?’ As one or my favorite authors Scott Peck started off in his book, The Road Less Travelled with the profound statement, “Life is difficult.”

Can you imagine - if life was indeed “fair”, all the good people would look beautiful, be extremely wealthy, have perfect health, wonderful family and relationships. In fact, no one would want to be bad, so the whole world would be perfectly perfect.

No, I don’t think we really want that. What we want is to be able to transcend our personal challenges and difficulties faced, to rise above adversity and be the hero in our own life. As Lou Holtz remarked, “Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I’ll show you someone who has overcome adversity.”

US representative Fred Grandy shared an anecdote that makes good sense for those struggling with day-to-day adversity. There was an old farmer who had suffered through a lifetime of afflictions and troubles, that would have turned most people into a grumpy, unhappy person, but not this old man, who never lost his sense of humor.

“How did you managed to keep so happy and serene?” asked a friend.

“It ain’t hard,” said the old man with a twinkle in his eye, “I’ve just learnt to cooperate with the inevitable.”

As a old Chinese saying advises, “When fate throws a dagger at you, there are only two ways to catch it - either by the blade or handle.” Cooperating with the inevitable means we learn to catch adversity by the handle and use it as a tool for which it was intended.

So, if things are not going as you desire right now in your life - take heart. Ask yourself, what you can learn from the experience, and how can you rise above the obstacle or pothole, to be stronger, better, to achieve awesome success in life.

It’s not what we are born with or talents we are “gifted” with, that will determine how far we go in life, it’s what we do we hat we have, and how far we want to go.

I will leave you with a truly inspiring though from one of my greatest heroes, Helen Keller, who was deaf, speechless and blind since childhood: “The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were not limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.

I will be sharing on "Rising Above Adversity" in the Personal Excellence and Growth Meetup on Aug 15th. Do come and join us!