The opportunity to rise
This morning I was reading through some of the posts about Kobe Bryant and the tragic accident that killed him, his daughter and several friends. I didn't know much about him, (Having no real interest in basketball) but I was struck by a particular quote that I saw shared several times.
"Everything negative - pressure, challenges - is all an opportunity for me to rise" - Kobe Bryant
This is such an incredibly simple but profound statement. I sat for a while contemplating it and the fact that so many of us miss the vital nature of this concept because THIS is the place where it all happens. This idea of rising in adversity IS the actual work that we must do if we are ever to become who we aspire to, and are made to be.
Preparing yourself for change is not hard, regardless of what kind. Sitting down and deciding on goals, creating action plans, making decisions about what you want your life to look like, that is not the work. That's the fun stuff.
It's easy for me to sit down with my journal and decide that I want to have a level of mastery over my anxiety or my tendency to give in to my depressive feelings and backslide into weeks of poor choices and hiding from my issues.
It's easy to draw up a budget and decide that I'm going to be debt-free and saved enough to buy an investment property in 2 years.
It's easy to decide that I want to be a certain size or weight and fit enough to run half marathons without any training.
But the real work comes in those moments where the choices are made. In the split second before allowing my mind to run away with a situation and trigger a panic that will result in me creating a truly crappy and unnecessary situation. In that moment where I'm about to throw caution to the wind and spend a week's worth of income on a bunch of things I probably don't need because I'm feeling low and it's easier to go shopping that face why I'm feeling like I'm not good enough. In the space between "I'm hungry but I'm too tired to cook" before I reach for a pint of ice-cream for dinner because "I'm an adult and I'll do what I like because no one can stop me!"
Those moments are when the work really happens. When we rise to the challenge despite the pressure we feel to default to previous behaviors or because we feel blah, or because it just feels like too much effort in that moment.
More importantly, and this is the true beauty of Kobe Bryant's words, we rise BECAUSE of those negative situations. Not in spite of them.
Adversity is the only thing that grants us the opportunity to grow and become greater than we were before because without it there is nowhere to go, no point in striving. So whatever negativity we experience we either create from it an opportunity, or a drama.
But because we fear conflict and unease, we shy away from things that are hard, we lose the opportunity. We brush it off as circumstances that are beyond our control and we'll do better when things are calmer. Which defeats the purpose of the challenge because if we give ourselves an excuse, an exit strategy to the difficulty we are tasked with growing through, of course we react badly and without conscious thought! Of course, we indulge in "retail therapy" trying to plug holes in ourselves with stuff! Of course we retreat into poor food decisions that make us feel like garbage long term!
Because its easier to just REACT, allowing ourselves to be a victim of the situation and find ways to justify it after the fact than it is to consciously choose mastery over ourselves and our actions and make decisions that will help us grow.
Every challenge is either an opportunity or a personal drama, but only one of those options is going to result in personal progress and the life you really want.
