"I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed"-Michael Jordan.
There are moments in your life when you have to face certain challenges. You or your loved ones have probably suffered some tragedies that made you feel like your world is crashing all around you. The shame and pain of your academic, business or professional failures may be so overwhelming that you want to throw in the towel altogether.
Each time you make an attempt to clamber out of the ditch of hopelessness into which you have fallen, your muddy hands and feet seem to be slipping from their grasp. Well, you don't have to despair. You only have to remain focused and determined. Here is how your struggles and difficulties in life simply represent the twists and turns on your path to success:
1. Your experience from life challenges spurs your creativity:
It is when you pass through some hardship and difficulties of life that you tend to think much more deeply and reasonably. The legendary Michael Jordan did not become a highly successful basketball superstar overnight. He failed to make his high school basketball team at some point. Even after he became a celebrity on the basketball court, he failed to hit the target several times. He did not succeed at every attempt. But after each failure, he learned new strategies to perfect his art.
Thomas Edison encountered multiple failures before he finally got it right and came up with the electric light bulb that lighted the whole world! Failures are simply the adrenaline you need to wire up your creative mind for better solutions to problems.
The tragedy of the Great Flood of Noah's time gave birth to the first and arguably the oldest branch of engineering....Civil Engineering. Without the flood, there would be no ark and without the ark, perhaps there would be no development of civil engineering as we know it today.
Although God contributed immensely to the construction of Noah's Ark by providing Noah with the knowledge and technological skills he used, Noah's creativity in building the massive ark was the origin of civil engineering and architecture; two branches of knowledge that have been in existence for generations.
You may have experienced serious setbacks in your endeavors like the people cited above. Or, your own albatross may be repeated failures in attempts to improve your academic progress and achievement. Rest assured that all these are designed to be part of life. They do not portend an end to your life.
2. God uses your life's bitter experiences to test your faith and resilience:
Sometimes God uses your suffering as a way to forge a new life for you. Think about the suffering of Job in the Old Testament. Despite the extreme physical, emotional and mental anguish that Job went through, he remained unwavering and never renounced God. He lost everything he had. But he survived the agony. Without Job passing through the tribulations, God might not have blessed him with greater possessions and a stupendous wealth with which he started a new life.
3. Life challenges provide opportunities for research in medical, scientific and technological advancement:
It is not by happenstance that you and I experience different kinds of misfortune in life. Those misfortunes are there for us to explore for the benefits of humanity. For instance, the tragedies of hurricane, tornadoes, twisters, volcanoes, tsunamis, etc. provide a goldmine of opportunities for research studies by scientists. Although these disasters have continued to wreak havoc, studies are ongoing for scientists to improve in the areas of accurate forecast and prevention of casualties.
The world has witnessed many terrible diseases such as Small Pox, Yellow Fever, Malaria, HIV/AIDS, SARS, H1N1, and EBOLA etc. that have claimed millions of lives. Some of these diseases have been successfully eradicated, while the others provide fertile ground for continued research studies.
4. No pain, no gain:
It is generally believed that what you don't suffer to get, you don't value much. This is why it is sometimes necessary to experience some discomfort while searching for happiness. Life without challenges is a life of bureaucratic and innovative inertia. A life of complacency where you don't step out of your comfort zone will lead you nowhere.