How Embracing Adversity Shapes Us into Our Best Selves
Do you dread failure, fearing that making mistakes will confirm your worst insecurities and expose you to public humiliation and judgment? It took me far too long to understand that true joy and fulfillment come not from avoiding struggles, but from embracing them. For years, I was terrified of struggle, failure, and imperfection. I believed that to be liked and to succeed, I had to be flawless. Avoiding struggle seemed like the only way to avoid failure, but it only led to a crippling fear of not always being the best.
But here’s the truth: every struggle, adversity, and obstacle is a gift that creates the opportunity for us to become the best versions of ourselves. Those who truly matter will support and uplift us, while only those whose opinions are worthless will try to tear us down or stop us. When we lean into obstacles, enjoy the struggle, and look for opportunity in every adversity, the true beauty and wonder of the world reveal themselves to us. Here is the story of how I figured it out for myself.
Before I continue, I want to acknowledge that my story may sound arrogant. This isn’t meant to boast, but rather to highlight my perspective of the past and reveal some valuable lessons. My early success inflated my ego to preposterous proportions, and I wasn’t ready when life came to smack me down and put me in my place.
It all started way back when I was a child in elementary school and moving on to middle school. I was a really smart kid, always have been, and I can thank my dad for that. I never struggled with assignments or class work; it was almost laughably easy. I loved playing football, and again, I didn’t have to struggle very much. I was good enough to play both offense and defense, staying on the field for almost the entire game. I did this without expending more than my base level of effort, never actually stretching my capabilities, or having to struggle to reach success. As we’ll see, this is where my problems would start to arise.
After only being in middle school for one year, my grandma passed away unexpectedly, prompting my parents to take action. They came to believe life was too short to postpone dreams, so we moved onto a sailboat in Mexico and decided to travel the Pacific side of Mexico and the Sea of Cortez. While this unique experience was incredible, I would whole-heartedly advise against it for children older than 11. At 12, and during the subsequent five years we spent on the boat, I met very few kids my age, leading to an isolated upbringing during crucial developmental years.
Pre-teen to teenage years are particularly formative, and instead of being in high school, I was on a sailboat in beautiful but remote places. While I believe the academic education of high school is often overrated, the social interaction and people skills gained during this time are invaluable. I missed out on these experiences, which delayed my development in those areas. My ego grew unchecked because I rarely encountered peers who could challenge me, further inflating my sense of superiority. Of the handful of friends I had during those years, I was without a doubt the best at just about everything. I rarely had to put in effort to beat them at anything. Part of this was that I was a little older, and part of it was that I was lucky to be born with an above-average mind and body. I even have one memory of being the overall champion of a Mexican Train dominos tournament, beating all the adults and kids that competed. If that doesn’t start to blow a kid’s ego up, I don’t know what would. This continued lack of challenge inflated my ego further, growing out of proportion with reality.
Fast forward a few years, and I had finally moved back to the United States and gotten a job. At this point, I’d worked in a restaurant in Mexico as a server and just started as a server in the US. Here is where my under-developed people skills combined with over-developed, unearned confidence (arrogance) started to show themselves. At both jobs, I would regularly fight with other employees because I didn’t like their quality of work, I thought I knew everything, and my skill at handling people was garbage. I also realize now that I was a massive complainer! (That topic deserves a whole article to itself!) Again here, the actual work was almost laughably easy. I became skilled at the technical aspects of customer service quite quickly, and it wasn’t long before I was in one of the coveted morning shift veteran positions and feeling stuck. (I go into way more detail on this topic in this article, but the exact details aren’t relevant to today’s discussion). This was when I started to try to find something bigger and more fulfilling to work on, and reality came crashing in.
Enter my time in Real Estate, the crushing doubt of not immediately succeeding, and my downward spiral in my relationship choices. I’ve detailed my journey in Real Estate more thoroughly in the other article, but for today’s discussion, all you need to know is that I did not succeed immediately, without having to apply myself, and that scared the hell out of me. Combine that with the utter implosion of my relationship and being cheated on, and you have one serious kick in the teeth from reality. That combination of events set the stage, but I was definitely not yet ready to learn the lesson.
No, that lesson was still a few more years in coming. I first had to go through several relationships that had no potential, build and ruin an entire business, and then fall into a deep depression trying to avoid it all.
I’m going to fast forward to just before the collapse of my business. Life was on the upswing; I had finally come out of the darkness of the smoking ruin of my “forever” relationship, I was healed and had worked through all the pain (or so I thought), and I had the brilliant idea to host a Dungeons and Dragons game and be the Dungeon Master (DM). One of my players ended up being a brilliantly intelligent and gorgeous woman who taught me many lessons. (I talk more about that in this article, but that’s not the focus for today.) Everything was going great! We had an awesome group of people, the first few games had gone well, and I was happy. It was again time for me to learn a lesson about adversity, struggle, and the value of tough obstacles.
It was during one of our weekly games, I started making mistakes, big ones, and some of the players were either getting completely forgotten by me, ignored, or just plain put in situations that were brutally not-fun. To my credit, after the game, I apologized and tried to figure out what I could do better, but later that evening and for the rest of the week, I let it eat at me. Instead of taking it as a learning experience, rolling with it, and learning a valuable lesson, I let it sit in my mind and fester, poisoning my enjoyment of the game and tearing into my own self-confidence. This was the beginning of the end of DnD games at my place. Shortly afterward, one of our players had to bow out (I believe in part because of my own actions and behavior… No blame towards them at all, I totally understand!). At this point, I had built DMing up into this giant dragon that felt impossible to slay, and instead of enjoying it and building a story with friends, I started to avoid it and dread it. I felt “saved” when I badly injured my toe and had an excuse to cancel all the future games. All because it got a little bit difficult and required me to learn and grow to overcome the obstacle. Instead of rising to the challenge, I took the first opportunity and ran!
That was also the beginning of a new dark age for me. I slipped into a haze of avoidance and misery. I let poisonous thoughts of inadequacy fester and grow in my mind like tumors. I rarely left my house for weeks, didn’t work, and stewed on my couch eating junk food and watching videos. I let my business collapse while I hid away. I did anything and everything to dull and bury the pain, except (thankfully) drink myself into a stupor. The thing is, short of obliterating your mind with drugs and alcohol every day (which is a terrible idea), you can’t avoid or bury your problems forever. Eventually, you must face them and work through them or live in pain and regret forever. I finally made the decision to completely upend my life and create a new environment for myself, I got rid of everything that wouldn’t fit in my car, loaded it up, and drove 1200 miles to Mexico to start fresh.
This was a key turning point in my life because there was a moment where I could have just fallen back into my old habits (and I nearly did) or do what I chose to do: at least try. I had to listen to the small voice in the back of my head that kept telling me, “There is more to life, you are meant for more.” I put a tight guard on the influences I let into my mind and started only listening to people who would lift me up and help me back on my feet. This is the subject of my entire article on mentors. Right now, we are talking about how to turn adversity into opportunity.
I had to learn this the hardest way I could, like all my most valuable lessons in life. I came to realize that my easy success early in my life was a blessing and a curse. If all I wanted was a mediocre average life where I was slightly better than everyone else at something I didn’t really care about, it would have been fine, even easy. I could have just marched that false confidence on soullessly to a slightly better than average life. But I knew and believed that I was meant for more, as I now believe that ALL of us are meant for more.
It took looking back on my life with a new lens, one that Trent Shelton and his lessons on perspective, combined with some heavy doses of self-reflection, helped me create. I looked back at all the times I was most fulfilled and successful in life and realized that every one of those times, like when I was starting my business, I had a purpose in mind that I was pursuing and I was facing adversity head-on. I looked back and realized that every one of my most valuable lessons had come from a time when I had a major obstacle, adversity, or mistake to overcome. It made me realize that, just like without darkness, there can be no light, without sorrow, there can be no joy. As humans, without struggle, there can be no success. Without something to strive for and obstacles to overcome, there is no point, and everything becomes meaningless. Our adversity becomes our opportunity. With every obstacle that is put in front of us that we choose to overcome and learn from, we grow as people and our life becomes fulfilling.
Remember, every struggle, adversity, and obstacle is a gift we are given that creates the opportunity for us to become the best versions of ourselves possible and live a life full of meaning and fulfillment. I urge you to lean into the obstacles, enjoy the struggle, and look for opportunity in every adversity. When you do, the true beauty and wonder of the world reveal themselves to you!
Have you ever struggled with an obstacle and learned a valuable lesson once you overcame it? Share your story with me in the comments or email me @ tim@timfaulkner.net