The Gift of Adversity

I have discovered adversity is a gift. The challenges I have faced in the past and overcame got me to where I am today. The obstacles I will face in the future will mold me into the person I can become.

Personally, the greatest adversity I have faced was the death of my 3-year-old brother when I was 14.

Professionally, the most significant challenge I faced was losing a client the day before Thanksgiving in 2008—a client who accounted for 25% of my total income.

Had I not faced those challenges and adversities, I would not be the person I am today, and I know for a fact I wouldn't be writing about them in this letter.

However, those two challenges would not have impacted me or driven me to use them as motivation to serve others if I hadn't taken the time to learn from them.

Lessons learned from challenges overcome are not always instantaneous, and the gifts we gain from adversity are not always packaged in the way we expect.

Seeing the Gift

As a kid, I grew up not liking birthdays or Christmas. As a middle-aged man, I can scoff at the reasons, knowing they are incredibly selfish. I disliked instances where I would get gifts because I felt I never got what I wanted.

My parents, dairy farmers at the time, did everything possible to ensure that my siblings and I had what we needed.

I never remember going without. I don't ever remember where we were without simple necessities.

Yet, I was rarely satisfied with whatever I got.

So often in life, that same mentality seeps in and infects adults.

We expect everything to be perfect and linear. We expect the sale to go through, the promotion to happen, and the win.

Life is anything but linear, though. The ups, downs, twists, and turns create the results that make their mark.

I’m not sure when my mind shifted; most likely, it was joining an industry where possibility was whatever you made of it.

The gift of network marketing in my life and the lives of my wife and kids will forever be a distinction simply because it created such a profound mindset shift and drive to pursue possibility when everything else was seemingly linear before.

It provided the soil and conditions for the seeds of my previous challenges to sprout.

We See What We Want to See

I imagine you have done the red car exercise. Someone plays a video and asks you to watch and observe.

Then, they ask how many red cars you saw. You think you saw one or two, and then they play the short clip again.

In 23 seconds of video showing LA traffic, you count 17 red cars.

It's the same video. Before you focused on the cars, they never stuck out. Once you focused on them, you counted every single one, including a few maroon cars that might as well be considered red.

The gift of adversity is the same. If we condition our minds to see the difficulty, we automatically stunt the situation's value.

When my friend Ian was given a pay cut due to the same financially challenging period I lost my client in 2008, he faced a choice.

Take the path that seemed logical, or entertain something bigger.

Ian could have worked a night shift, making $14 or $15 per hour, and scraped by until something changed, or he could have taken a chance.

In that case, he saw a possibility. He saw possibilities because he had few other options.

That one decision, with a lot of work, mentorship, and effort, transformed his life from getting by to multi-million dollar exits.

But that didn't happen overnight, nor did it happen without more adversity along the way.

Lesson Learned

The greatest teacher isn’t experience; it's evaluated experience.

With each adverse experience, we can learn lessons if we have the mindset and circumstances to learn the lessons. From these lessons, we can mold our mindset to see the possibility of something more significant in the future.

It's no coincidence that society's greatest advancements come from the most challenging times. When things get tough, tough people become more resourceful.

It will happen again for you and me.

You could be facing challenges that seem insurmountable right now. Maybe, like one of my friends, you are facing a recent layoff or, like another, a failed partnership.

It could be a health challenge or a gut-wrenching tragedy. Adversity strikes in moments we can anticipate or when no one expects.

The only question is, will we accept the gift or get upset that it isn't what we asked for?

The lesson I had to learn, which also applies here, is that every gift we receive has value. It's up to us to seek the value and appreciate it.