Dealing with Adversity
An open letter to those who are on the job hunt.
It’s tough. It is. Working tirelessly and studying at odd hours of the night in the hope that one day your trust in “the process” will pay off. To those who took a risk and made a career change during the global pandemic, you are worth more than you know.
Most people can understand the stress and anxiety of taking risk followed by the incessant need to pour an unsustainable amount of energy into achieving your goal. Passing days cause the little things to blur tying the majority of your satisfaction to a single thing — progress.
The thing is — you’ve already gained some of the most valuable skills in the world. These skills cannot be learned in a classroom. They require experience. Persistence, discipline, initiative, ingenuity, and trust in your ability to learn and excel no matter the topic or obstacle in your life.
Life dealt you a hand of cards. A hand that pushed you to the limit. For a moment, you believed that you had nothing more to give. Somehow you reached into the well and summoned the energy to make a life changing decision. Some of you had no choice. Some of you needed change. No matter which shoe fits, at your limit, when you felt you couldn’t — you could.
Now you stand at a crossroads — again at your limit, wondering how you will find the energy to push further. The beautiful thing about this moment is that whether you realize it or not, you’ve been here before. You’ve practiced and now have experience. It’s easy to get caught in the moment and forget that the last time you were here — you found a way. There was no “but”, there were no “what if’s”, you reached your limit and even though you knew that you couldn’t — you could.
As you stand there with more knowledge, more experience and the ability to push further than you ever have — your newfound mindset tells you that you’ve reached your new limit. If you find yourself here, you aren’t alone. Anyone who has climbed past their limit to achieve amazing, new and beautiful things has reached this point.
The obstacles you’ve faced, the ones you thought you’d never overcome — you overcame them. It’s a fact or you wouldn’t be here. On good days, you pushed right through. On bad days, you hesitated, you tried to go around, you took breaks, you told yourself the things you are telling yourself now — and then (with a little time) you won anyway. Every time. Regardless of the situation, the stress, the seemingly impossible odds — when you couldn’t, you could.
Here’s a little logic for you. If you still don’t see it, take a quick glance at the big picture and it’ll show you that every time you’ve felt like quitting, you found a way. Whether you took the long road or the short road; 100 percent of the time — when you couldn’t, eventually, you could. So here is a call to action for you — use kind, inspirational and loving language when you let your mind engage in self talk.
If you just rolled your eyes a bit because you only care about results and don’t believe in the power of self-talk then I’ll have to ask you to re-read that last paragraph. If you don’t believe your words will yield results, then stop using negative ones — you don’t believe in them anyway. For everyone else, believe yourself when you say you can overcome this obstacle. Up until this point, whether you took the short road, the long road or a new road; 100 percent of the time — when you couldn’t, you could.
If you walked into a casino knowing you had a 100 percent chance of walking out as a winner, I doubt you’d be very stressed. So take a moment, silence the noise, be kind to yourself, be kind to others and remember that you are here because you know you can. Some final thoughts from the famous and successful man who’s asked millions of people around the world if they can smell what the Rock is cooking, in your moments of stress “don’t be sad because sad backwards is das, and das not good” — Dwayne Johnson.
See it. Believe it. Achieve it. Help yourself and you will win.
