Three Questions to Ask Yourself When Facing Adversity

I recently attended a workshop where the guest speaker was lecturing about the importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace. One of her slides touched briefly on facing adversity and I jotted them down and thought I would expand on them here. It was noted that the sourced website was: https://www.6seconds.org/

When facing adversity, challenges or circumstances beyond our control we can ask ourselves three questions:

  1. Is this permanent?  Very often what feels permanent, is in fact temporary. Sometimes we can have an experience that does come with finality (loss of job, break up), however we can be assured that with time and process, our feelings surrounding that experience will lesson with intensity.
  2. Is this pervasive? How much of this adversity is consuming our life? Are we able to function within it? There are times when the challenge will be all consuming; it is then that we must lean into “one day at a time” thinking as a way to focus on staying the course until things feel balanced again.
  3. Is it taking too much power? And there are times when the power the challenge holds is unbalanced. Very often, it is our all consuming emotions about the adversity that help to contribute to that feeling . Re-shifting our focus can often help in reestablishing the power differential. Making decisions, creating a plan or moving in a new direction can create the same shift.

Very often, our challenges have the ability to overwhelm us. They begin to feel all consuming as the mix of heightened emotions will move us out of our comfort system. Asking ourselves these three questions can help in processing our feelings; allowing us to take the wheel – despite the veer off course.

Photo credit: http://Photo by Jukan Tateisi on Unsplash

Like this post? Consider subscribing!

2 thoughts on “Three Questions to Ask Yourself When Facing Adversity”

Leave a comment