SelfhelpMagazine

Adversity I

Facing Adversity

Despite our best efforts and intentions, all of us are bound to be disappointed in the course of our careers. This is especially true for people who are receptive to new ideas and like to try new things. The more original the idea, and the greater the possible gain, the more chance there may be for failure and disappointment.

Of course, we hope most of our results will be positive. But we still have to learn to live with the bad as well as the good. We can't afford to become unduly discouraged when a new person doesn't work out, a job misses schedule, an order is lost, or our boss turns down a good suggestion.

How do you react to disappointment?

• Do you, for example, try to find out the reasons so it won't happen again? Or waste time trying desperately to find someone or something to pin the blame on?
• Do you take the disappointment in stride and bounce back as quickly as you can? Or let it unnerve you?
• Do you turn your attention to the next problem without fretting and worrying about the failure?
• Do you help other people land on their feet when they stumble? Or make life even rougher by jumping all over them?
• Do you have the courage to accept occasional disappointment as the price of progress? Or does it discourage you?
• It's only common sense to steer clear of failure. But the person hasn't been born who is clever enough to succeed at everything he or she tries.
• Realistic people accept an occasional disappointment as part of the job and make the best of it.

Trouble shared is trouble halved. - Dorothy Sayers

A Reminder

One of the most treasured pieces in the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont, is a rug bearing the Latin inscription Nec Aspera Terrent (Be Not Terrified by Adversity).

It always has had special meaning for Baroness Maria von Trapp and her children,the famous Trapp Family Singers, because the rug, a gift from a friend, arrived on December 21, 1980, a day after a fire razed the famous lodge, killing a guest and injuring seven others.

It took three years and $7 million to rebuild the lodge, but the Trapps never had any doubts about rebuilding. To battle adversity was nothing new to them. The family, immortalized in the musical The Sound of Music, fled Austria in 1938 rather than submit to orders directing Baron von Trapp, a former submarine captain, to return to the German Navy. On arrival in the United States, the family had only $3.50.

When work on their first Vermont lodge was nearing completion, the structure was destroyed by a storm, so they started all over with a second lodge, the one that burned down in 1980.

On December 18, 1983, the day the successor to the burned-down lodge opened, Johannes von Trapp recalled that, when the rug arrived right after the fire, he had decided it would be prominently placed in the lobby of the new hotel.

Adversity is a fact of life. It can't be controlled. What we can control is how we react to it. Three Minutes a Day - Vol 24, Christopher Books