How to Allow Adversity to Refine Us Not Define Us

I want to share some ideas that will bring perspective about this for you. So gather yourself sit down, relax, fascinate, SIBO. And let’s get ready to have a great episode. Let’s go. Over this recent weekend, I have been a little bedridden, my, my back began to act up over the course of the last 48 hours, I probably spent a good 25 to 30 of them just pretty immobile laying in my bed, I knew this would be a week that was going to allow me to heal my lower back. And so I got up this morning feeling a little sorry for myself that I was going to be unable to do my daily routine. And I gave it my best effort I began the day in full earnest of wanting to do my daily routine, something changed when I opened up my journal and I began writing the idea of allowing this adversity to stop me allowing this adversity to define my day allowing this adversity to become yet another excuse for why I have to wait until ideal circumstances and situations to really go for it.

I’m writing this out, I’m looking at this. I’m realizing that in the last several weeks, if not a month and a half, I’ve been writing a heck of a wave. Obviously, that wave is contributed by my recent nuptials, and writing that, you know, just traveled, just had a party. I just published over six episodes last month. And that momentum was building this wave that was given me the momentum to keep going and going and Friday, I felt my back kind of give out a little bit. And usually that takes a week to heal. But I made a choice today, I made a choice that I am going to do something different than I’m going to rewrite that story that this will be an opportunity for adversity not to define me as someone who makes excuses in the face of looking toward their dreams and waiting for the ideal moment to close the gap.

But to let this refine me, let me do this in spite of what is going on. So we all have different types of adversity. We have health adversity, money, adversity, relationship, adversity, career adversity, people who look like they’re standing in front of us blocking our path to success, that we’re going to have to wait until conditions are clear to proceed. But folks, guess what, there’s always going to be something someone that is not perfect or ideal. I look at my great heroes. I look at the ancestors, I look at the profiles and biographies I’ve read and there is a trait that hasn’t been really clear to myself and this will seem so far obvious as I say it out loud. But I want you to reflect I want you to really personalize this.

I want you to examine your life and ask yourself what happens at the first sign of adversity. And so at this adversity I was making the next Excuse. And you’ll notice in history that what happens when the going gets tough. The tough get going. But that’s cliche. That’s a phrase that’s, that’s commonplace. We’re used to that phrase. I’m asking you to allow adversity to refine you, make you better, give it your all, even if what you’re all is today is not all that it’s ever been. Begin where you are allowed today to also be that first domino, find out your limit on the field and not in your mind. So I stand here today, with a crook back recording this podcast. As testament to this principle, in a minute or two, I’m gonna sit down, lay back and get back up and keep going.

This is halftime talk. So it’s built on the analogy of halftime in and sporting events. If that’s the moment you’re in right now, where there’s so many things competing for your attention, diverting your focus away from everywhere you want to go, I implore you, I ask of you to go hard to give it all you have to carve the time, because it’s worth it one beautiful thing about momentum, it will ride you into the sunset. And to mentally let go of the wind from your sail allows opportunity to feel like you’re going backwards. And one of the things in the past that I was vividly aware of is this notion of momentum and how something like this would be the reason for why I lost my steam.

But that’s not going to happen anymore for me or for you because both of us recognize listening to this right now both of us recognize that it does not define us. Just because something’s going on inside of us and it can be extreme or it could be light like I’m dealing with, I have my mind I have my hands, I have all the tools it takes to create I can lean on this desk, I can lean on a friend I can lean on my values and to be defined by the values we say is to also be reflected in the values we we we exemplify in our daily behavior. Adversity can either define you or it can refine you the best of the best of the best.

Find a way to perform under all conditions. I love going back to my favorite musical hero J Dilla. deathbed masterpieces, Michael Jordan flew masterpieces, Kobe Bryant, broken finger masterpieces. The ability to create masterpieces in the face of adversity is a testament to the character that we’re able to cultivate in our day to day activities in our day to day life, week by week, step by step, experience by experience, the sum total of our life will be not what happened on the good days, everybody can run on a good day, waiting for conditions to clear is a little too easy. Everybody can show up to refine that greatness that is within you. I’m asking for a little bit more than some would expect from you. I’m asking only a view that somebody’s deep within you that inner knowing that inner being sees you capable of, if you fall through exhaustion.

If you fall through the sheer fact that you just cannot push through this issue. That’s one thing. But to allow the construction of your imagination to congeal around an image that we know as an excuses unforgivable. Now ask you whose criteria are you playing by? Is it the people looking in? Is it the audience? Is it the critics? Is it somebody that will be like maybe you know, you should rest maybe you should let go maybe that excuses valid, the validity of the excuses. Only still an excuse. There’s part of us deep down within knows what we’re capable of. knows our breaking point and we know our breaking point. But don’t let an imaginary excuse. stand in the way of you doing what you’re meant to do not to get it done.

But do what you do as a as a reflection of who you are, what you stand for, how far you’re willing to go. To be, not to receive to be who you say you are. Now, in the grand scheme of things I my little back issue doesn’t compare to the loss of a loved one. does it compare to a body riddled with some type of prognosis? does it compare to dark days, just real dark days, but I’m asking you to keep this in mind on those days, I’m asking you to shine that light that is within to the world, not because of what it will lead you to. But because it is who you are. We can allow adversity to define us to paint the picture of the box that we present to the world.

Or we can let it sharpen our sword that even this I can slice through, even this I can stand upon and be higher than I began. I wish everything was as organized and colorful as a beautiful coloring book where you can stay within the lines, where you can check off every box in a situation and know that you will get the result the ingredients of the dish that you’re preparing is unknown. But in order to prepare it, you have to show up, you have to give it your all. And this is what I’m offering you today, to understand that you’re capable of it. And to understand what you’re capable of. You got to play the game you got to get on the field. Will it hurt?

Let me tell you, it may hurt. But guess what, it will give you the confidence. It’ll give you the courage. And it gives you that self expectation that even while facing this, I can excel even in the face of the storm. I can fly. So these are the words that I want to share with you today that can allow you to lean on my shoulder that can allow you to see yourself in your proper light that can allow you to stand up when all others even your former self would have doubted you.