Overcoming Difficult Experiences
“A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.” ~ Seneca
I recently sought wise counsel from Mimi Peak, an extraordinary Coach, to help me in my efforts to powerfully serve one of my clients who was dealing with a great deal of uncertainty, as he navigated an important transition in his life. During the discussion, Mimi shared with me these wonderful words that stand to guide us all, during our most unsettling of moments — “We cannot see the magic that will come from this.”
From there, Mimi encouraged me to watch Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address, which I immediately did. In it, Jobs shares with us some of the profound lessons the he learned from a few of the moments in his life where he was faced with uncertainty, one a moment of significant loss, and one a moment of transition in his life. Speaking on the moment of transition, Steve Jobs encourages us to “trust that you can’t connect the dots looking forward…so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future…because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leaves you off the well-worn path and that will make all the difference.” Speaking on the moment of loss, Jobs shared that being fired from Apple, during his first stint, allowed him to enter the most intensely creative periods of his life, where he started two successful companies, met his wife and started a family.
It seems that, since I’ve had this concept on my mind lately, I’ve noticed evidence of this in many other peoples’ lives and, it turns out that the scientific community has a term for this phenomenon. Positive outcomes as a byproduct of resilience in the face of difficulty, is referred to as Adversarial Growth, otherwise known as Post Traumatic Growth. In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor writes that, “the most successful people see adversity not as a stumbling block, but as a stepping-stone to greatness.”
In a wonderful book titled Solve For Happy, author Mo Gawdat also comments on this idea. Gawdat, in his own life, faced unimaginable tragedy, and, like the esteemed psychiatrist Viktor Frankl with the story he tells in his landmark text — Man’s Search For Meaning, surfaced from the cloud of grief to live a joyful, deliberate, and fulfilling life. Like Jobs, Gawdat urges us to consider the idea that a moment that seems incredibly devastating can end up being a blessing in disguise. While people are often unable to acknowledge this in the moment, later on the message becomes clear — wonderful things have sprouted from that event. Mo Gawdat shares with us an exercise that helps can help us make peace with our most difficult moments. He calls it the “Eraser Test.” With it, he encourages us to engage in a thought experiment whereby we erase a difficult moment from our past. The catch is that we must also wipe out the trail of events that followed, as a result. Mo explains that the majority of those who he had guided through the exercise elected to keep the difficult moments, because of how those moments positively impacted the trajectory of their lives. In his text, Mo poses the following question: “how many of the worst things that you’ve faced turned out, in time, to be the best things that ever happened to you?” Pick a difficult moment from your past. Would you erase this piece of your personal history, if it meant that all the results that followed would also be wiped away?
In an excellent episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast, with ex-Navy Seal Nick Norris, Tim speaks of this notion as “the gift that is attached to the pain.” Tim goes further to share that many of his mentors’ “superpowers were forged from a lot of their greatest pain.”
In my own life, there have been events from my past that were incredibly difficult to navigate through, to say the least, and there is one that I revisit in my life often, as, without it having taken place, I wouldn’t have come to know the most beautiful set of circumstances that ever came to be for me. This moment took place in late adolescence. Toward the end of my high school days, I had wanted to attend Villanova University, as I was accepted into the school of Engineering. Having visited the campus, during a tour, I was drawn to the beauty of the Pennsylvania countryside, the layout of the campus, the cool crisp feel of the East Coast air and, most of all, I was dreaming of independence. I knew that going to school 2,500 miles away from my family and my hometown, would afford me the opportunity to live a more deliberate life than the one I felt I was living at the time. The idea of attending Villanova was incredibly alluring. Unfortunately for me, at the time, I was not going to be able to attend Villanova, primarily for financial reasons. Instead, I ended up at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Years into my life in Santa Barbara, I met my incredible wife and, later, started a wonderful family. As a result, I now have three healthy vibrant extraordinary young children, I live in an excellent community, and none of this would have been possible, had my initial wish come true. I would be leading a very different life, to say the least. I’m incredibly grateful for that experience. That unsettling moment was but a small price to pay for the unending joy that I experience, each day, in my life today. My family fills me with immense purpose and, looking back, now, I wouldn’t even dream of erasing that event from my past.
Another experience that led to something incredible, was being laid off from a previous employer. In the moment, it was incredibly inconvenient. It disrupted the comfortable life that I had created and it was a major blow to my ego, to say the least. It was a reality check, but, at that stage of my life, it also created an opportunity for me to live a dream, for a period of time. It allowed me to momentarily pursue a career as an actor, which sent me on an awesome journey. Had I never set sale on this adventure, I most definitely would have felt a deep sense of regret, at the end of my life. I have since moved on from that career, by choice, but I know that need has now been fulfilled, and it absolutely would not have been possible, had I continued with that particular employer.
Despite wanting to take the path of least resistance, we need these moments to help us grow. It’s clichè, at this point, but to strengthen a muscle, you must apply force against it, repeatedly or for long durations of time. To improve the quality of our lives, we must face difficult experiences and persist, because, with each of these experiences, comes a new profound lesson, a new piece of valuable insight, an important new skill, the intense motivation to work harder the next time to achieve the desired result, and it builds upon our confidence that we can, in fact, overcome the things that we fear would absolutely do us in, so that we get stronger, and stronger, and stronger, with each passing event.
When you encounter difficulty, failure, a setback, or a period of great uncertainty, keep in mind, that what lies on the other side of what feels like a mountain, doubtless is going to be an incredible gift.
