Life’s Challenges

“Adversity introduces a man to himself “.  Author Unknown.

“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you—they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” – Bernice Johnson Reagon

When speaking of Life’s Challenges, these two quotes come foremost to my mind. Let me begin with the first quote. There is nothing like adversity to show you the mirror. Times of adversity are the times when you get to face the realities. Someone rightly said that success introduces you to the world and failures introduces the world to you. When you face difficult times, one of the two things can happen.

One can allow life’s challenges to pull one under, and live in a depressed state, and head nowhere. Things can only get worse from here on. And boy, can they get bad !

The other option is to rise up to the challenges, and do something about the situation. Difficult, but not impossible. After all, even IMPOSSIBLE says I M POSSIBLE. It is all a matter of choice, and of course, our choices are shaped by our attitude.

Life’s journey has taught me a lot of valuable lessons. I went from being a nobody to a name to be reckoned with, and back to being a nobody. So how did I handle the transitions ? Of course, success is easy to accept, and the first transition was smooth, and things went very well for more than a decade.

Then came the second phase of life – the more difficult one. The transition from being someone well known to a nobody is not something that life prepares you to handle. It comes as a rude shock. And that’s exactly how it felt to me. The worst part of it was, the realities hit you in small doses almost on a daily basis, and each time it hurts more than before. This is when you find out who your true friends and well-wishers are. Like everyone else who may be reading this post, I too had heard this countless times. But no matter how many times you hear people say this, you don’t realize how true this is till it happens to you.

I could go on and on, and share all these experiences here with you, but that’s not the purpose of my being here. I just want to share with you the fact that in my case, I could not handle it right. I allowed the situation to overwhelm me. I wallowed in self-pity for a long time. I kept looking at the past instead of moving on in life. I kept staring at closed doors and ignored everything else. I felt that my identity had been taken from me, and I felt helpless. I let my life fall to pieces, and almost destroyed my family life.

Until one fine day, I decided that enough was enough, and decided that a fresh perspective on life was required. I forced myself to accept that the past was in the past, and that there was a road that I was on had a dead-end, and a U-turn was required. And I pushed myself to take the U-turn. The credit for this goes to the unflinching support from my wife, who perhaps understood better than me what I was going through, and encouraged me to move on. And it is this turn in life that I want to focus on.

Let’s talk about the second quote now. After having allowed life’s challenges to paralyze me temporarily, I began to rediscover myself. Whilst I was in my previous employment, I used to teach on the side, not to make money, but more because I enjoyed it. I got some offers to teach and train people and I took them up, and to my own surprise, I did rather well at this, and soon I was visiting several institutes as a visiting faculty and teaching youngsters. Being with them infused me with new energy.

But since I was not doing it full-time, I had plenty of time to spare, and that’s when I decided to go back to my travel trade and make a new start. The first time round, I fell flat on my face. Never mind, I said to myself. In fact, for a while, I even gave it up, but still kept on with teaching and training. I kept myself motivated, with a lot of encouragement from my loved ones, and also with a lot of support from a few good friends who have stood by me through thick and thin.

Even with the setback I had from my first attempt at launching my own venture, I stayed positive. I kept my dreams alive, and this time, I guess luck also had a role to play. With the help of a friend, I got my first break in setting up my own venture successfully, and by the grace of God, I had a modest start. A minor expansion followed soon, and slowly but surely I am moving ahead.

And move ahead I will. Because I have promised myself that I will make it once again, and will do all that is ethically possible to achieve what I want to achieve. I will stay motivated, because I have seen the consequences of what happens when you don’t. And I will help others get motivated in any way that I can. It is this attitude that is making it easier for me to accept life’s challenges, and whatever else life chooses to throw my way.

I have never been a blogger earlier, and this is my very first attempt. Actually, this post is just to share with you why I am here. I am sure that I will be back again soon with more posts on motivation and positive attitude. That is the way forward for me.

To sum up for now, I will close with one of my favourite quotes – I may not be all that I should be, but I’m more than what I used to be, and God isn’t finished with me yet !

Stay tuned in, stay motivated, and stay positive. Life’s challenges are not insurmountable !

Cheers !

Author: Rajiv

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