It’s not the struggle that defines you but rather how you respond.
Some thoughts worth pondering when it comes to personal struggles.
As Elisabeth Kübler-Ross famously wrote in On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy and Their Own Families:
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness and deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
“Rather than something to be avoided or denied,” write Scott Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire in Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind, it is the hardships and challenges both internal and external — that make us beautiful.
We all make mistakes. We all face challenges and difficulty. That’s part of the natural process of life.
It’s these moments that offer us the opportunity to respond:
Just because we’ve lost our way doesn’t mean that we are lost forever. In the end, it’s not the failures that define us so much as how we respond.
In the end, everything can be taken from you but one simple thing: your ability to choose how you respond.
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