Powerful Results Amongst Adversity

How can we achieve powerful results even amongst adversity? Over the past couple of days I have been reflecting on the personal strength that comes when we confront life's challenges and adversities with courage and determination. At a very young age I was taught a very simple truth, "Life is 10% that happens to me and 90% how I react to it."

They Succeeded Through Adversity, So Will You

The lessons of history serve to remind us that people of courage and determination have found success and become influences for good even amongst adversity. The following quote from Ted Engstrom explains this point perfectly:

"Cripple him, and you have Sir Walter Scott. Lock him in a prison cell, and you have John Bunyan. Bury him in the snows of Valley Forge and you have a George Washington. Land him in poverty, and you have an Abraham Lincoln. Subject him to bitter religious strife, and you have a Disraeli. Strike him with Infantile Paralysis, and you have a Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only President of the United States to be elected to four terms of office. Burn him so severely in a schoolhouse fire that the doctors say he will never walk, and you have a Glenn Cunningham, who set a world record in 1934 for running the mile in 4 minutes 6.7 seconds.

Deafen a genius composer who continues to compose some of the world's most beautiful music, and you have a Beethoven. Drag him more dead than alive out of a rice paddy in Vietnam, and you have a Rocky Bleier, that beautiful runningback for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Have him or her born black in a society filled with racial determination, and you have a Booker T. Washington, Harriet Tubman or Martin Luther King Jr. Have him born of parents who survived a Nazi concentration camp, paralyze him from the waist down at the age of four, and you have an Itzhak Perlman, the incomparable violinst. Call him "retarded" and write him off as "uneducated," and you have an Albert Einstein.

After losing both his legs in an airplane crash, let an RAF fighter pilot fly, and you have World War II ace Douglas Bader, who was captured by the Germans three times and escaped three times on two artificial limbs. Label him too stupid to learn, and you have a Thomas Edison. Label him a hopeless alcoholic, and you have a Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous . Tell her she is too old to start painting at 80, and you have a Grandma Moses. Blind him at age 44, and you have a John Milton, who 10 years later wrote Paradise Lost. Call him dull and hopeless and flunk him in the 6th grade and you have a Winston Churchhill.

Tell a young boy who loved to draw and sketch that he had no talent, and you have a Walt Disney. Rate him mediocre in chemistry, and you have a Louis Pasteur. Take a crippled child whose only home was an orphanage, and you have a James West, who became the first chief executive of the Boy Scouts of America."

Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% of we react. That is the secret to powerful results amongst adversity. We must not give up, but move forward with courage and determination to overcome.