Hello wonderful blog friends! Today I’d like to introduce you to Debbie Bills. She is the creator and author of the fantastic blog Happy Maker Now. I love Debbie’s no-nonsense advice and her tell it like it is approach. Her life experience makes her a pro when it comes to giving advice on how to live a happier life. Please check out her blog at www.happymakernow.com as soon as you can and subscribe! So please welcome my guest author, Debbie Bills!
How to Survive Adversity and Yes, Even Thrive!
“If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be”
by John Heywood.
Have you ever wished for a world with no problems, no worries, everything just went on day after day with nothing new happening?
Have you every stopped to think the only way that is going to happen is if you are dead? Dead people don’t have any more problems, worries or adversity in their lives. So before your start wishing for something you need to stop and think, ‘Is this really what I want.”
Life is a play ground if you look at it from the positive side. I know you’re saying, “Lady you have no idea how bad it can get. Yes I do know how bad it can get. Let me make a list of things that can go wrong and have gone wrong for me.
- Growing up my parents didn’t have much money. Lived from pay check to pay check. (One pair of shoes at a time)
- Lived in a house with no running water until I was in the 7th grade.
- Was engaged to a man that dumped me without any explain. (He was in the Navy)
- Married a child molester, only for 1 ½ years. (That’s another blog post.)
- Remarried someone that was described to me as a husband and wife lying on a slap in a mortuary.
- While married the second time, my house was sold right before it was to be foreclosed on.
- File bankruptcy also in that marriage.
- Divorced with an ex that thought he didn’t need to pay child support for 3 children. He went 4 years without a job.
- Supported and raised 3 children on my own.
There is more I could add, but I don’t want to bore you. Yes, I do know what adversity is, you do get through it with the right attitude. Learn to bend in the wind like a tree!
We all have this in common. That is…at some point in our life, we all face adversity. It’s not a matter of “if”, but “when”. The difference between success and failure comes down to choice. When adversity strikes, it’s not what happens that will determine our destiny; it’s how we react to what happens.
If you drew a picture of your day, you would find that some days the line is pretty straight with few hills and curves in it. Then there are those days and sometimes weeks where all you have is curves, hills and very low valleys.
Now if you take a look at a dead person’s day, it is just one straight line all the time. Day after day, night after night. Not a good alternative.
How I overcome adversity?
- Prayed a lot. My heart does go out to you if you aren’t a believer, because I do not believe I would have survived without knowing that God was and still is on my side.
- Being raise with little, I did know how to make do.
- As for making wrong choice when it came to marriage, that was on my shoulders to figure out what I was doing wrong. Why all the bad choice. And I am here to tell you I finally figured it out and I am now very happily married to the right guy for the right reasons.
- I learned that you are what you think you are. If you think you have troubles and problems they are going to come and probably pick up speed as they come.
- Regardless of what is going on the sun is going to come up in the morning, so don’t let it go to waste; you can always find a way to have some fun.
- Take time out to act like a kid and laugh, because hard times will pass.
- Take it one day at a time and at the end of that day, just be thankful for all the little things and you survived with a roof over your head, clothes on your back and food in your tummy.
- Never give up, remember life is a class room and you are always learning new things.
- Learn what is really important, like the people you love and love you.
- This too shall end and there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Take those adversities and see life as a challenge and meet them head on. Be grateful for those crooked lines in your life it means you are alive and still in the ball game. Think of an Alzheimer patient, they are not in any pain and have no problems. Isn’t it much better to be aware with pain, than be mindless!
Are you handling the adversities in your life or are you struggling to stay in the ball game of life?
Here are your 3 choices: 1. Give up and be dead.
2. Pray for Alzheimer’s.
3. Except the adversity and learn from it.
Love to know which one of the 3 choice’s you pick. Just insert it in the comment box. Thank you and have wonderful life!
Debbie
The Reflective Self 