Adversity is a Teacher
Even at our lowest moments, there’s always something to learn.
I was only 18. After almost 7 years in a relationship with the kindest, sweetest and most beautiful girl, Charlotte was clearly unwell.
She’d always been prone to illness. Any infection that was in circulation would always catch her out, but this was different. This time, she was losing her ability to read, write, and even walk. We knew something was wrong, but nobody had anticipated just how bad things were.
Within weeks of things being almost completely normal, there we were in the hospital waiting room, anxiously trying to figure out what an earth was going on. And eventually we found out.
It was brain cancer. She has eighteen months to live.
I Probably Wasn’t That Happy Anyway
My life certainly hasn’t been an easy ride. Growing up with an alcoholic father, dealing with my mum’s breast cancer diagnosis, losing both of my grandparents — it’s all been a bit chaotic, to be honest.
But despite it all, I’ve always been able to pick myself back up, dust off, and carry on moving forwards. My family have forever been in awe of my ability to cope. That is, to remain strong, confident and laser-focused on my goals.
Recently, however, I’ve been less assured in my own abilities.
I’ve since been in another relationship with another wonderful girl. And two weeks ago, she ended things completely out of nowhere. To my complete surprise, the breakup completely brought me to my knees.
The past couple of weeks have been far more difficult than I anticipated. Now, however, I’m starting to see things in a slightly different light. I’ve stopped longing to return to the relationship and have instead begun to see it as a lesson, of sorts.
Truthfully, breaking up with a girl I’d been seeing for a little over three months shouldn’t have made me that unhappy. On reflection, though, I don’t think it did. Sure, it didn’t help things.
But I’ve come to realise that, actually, I wasn’t really that happy in the first place — with or without her.
And You Probably Aren’t, Either
Breakups are never easy.
If you’ve been through one, you know already how terrible they can make us feel. And yet, some people seem to have this remarkable ability to bounce back pretty quickly, relatively unscathed, and move forward as though nothing happened.
In my recent moments of reflection, I’ve come to realise something. Breakups are difficult, yes, but they’re infinitely more difficult when we weren’t really whole to begin with.
Many of us live our lives avoiding this harsh truth. That, deep down, we’re probably not that happy. If we were, would we really struggle so hard to break free from addictions to things like social media, consumerism and trash TV? If our lives were really that great, would we find it so hard to stick to our workout routines and avoid temptation?
Truthfully, we wouldn’t. If our mental health was at its peak, everything in life would feel a little easier — even hardship.
And yet, many of us ignore this sad but liberating fact. We continue to live as we are, repeating the same patterns and longing for change at some distant point in the future.
I was exactly the same. Between Charlotte’s death and today, I’ve done little more than envelop myself in constant distraction. I’m no longer grieving, but it’s like part of me is still avoiding reality and postponing the task that I’ll ultimately be forced to face.
That is, working on myself.
The Importance of Mental Health
With a lot of time on my hands in recent months, I’ve been in an endless pursuit of some kind of new project to sink my teeth into. Considering things like courses, sport and whatever else, I’ve been ignoring perhaps the most important project I’ll ever initiate in my life.
My recent breakup taught me something incredibly important. It brought me to rock bottom, a place I haven’t been in a while, for a good reason. That is, to show me in broad daylight that, actually, I wasn’t that happy in the first place.
In truth, and in contradiction to what my business focuses on teaching people, I haven’t been nearly as focused on self-improvement as I should be. I hadn’t meditated in over a year, read a personal development book in even longer or done so much as incorporated a healthy new habit in what feels like forever.
Why? Because I was living under the false pretence that I was absolutely fine — a pretence that I think most of us also use to masquerade our dissatisfaction.
It’s ironic, really. We spend so much time trying to improve everything else in our lives, from our career to our waistline, but we never seem to recognise the importance of a healthy mind. Or if we do, we rarely invest the time and effort into cultivating one.
I’m speaking for others here, and perhaps I’m wrong. But I also have a feeling you’re probably nodding your head in agreement.
Deep in the throes of yet another episode of heartache, if somebody had told me to seek the lessons within the pain, I’d have told them to fuck off. Feel free to tell me to do the same.
But I now see that, in time, these lessons do eventually come to the surface. They’re buried under many moments of intense sadness and difficulty, but they will come to fruition in time.
People will still continue to give you advice and seek to use their words to pull you from the darkness, and it might not really help all that much, but soon you might not even need their advice anymore.
That’s how I feel, anyway. That for the first time in two weeks, I’m able to seek solace in my own mind and counsel rather than having to find it elsewhere.
And, for the first time in many years, I’m back to putting my mental health before everything else. I’ve enrolled into several free courses on happiness, have begun identifying and eliminating existing sources of pain in my day-to-day life, and am making the time to build new, healthy habits into my life.
The pains of the past decade still hurt, of course. But I also know that I have everything I need to not only bandage the wounds, but to truly enable them to heal.
If it wasn’t for the recent breakup, I wouldn’t have learned this lesson. I’d have continued coasting along, convincing myself that I was happy and had no need to try and improve.
And for that reason, adversity is indeed a teacher. A cruel, masochistic teacher, but the best you’ll ever have. It shines a light on the cracks and crevices in your mind that you can’t see in brought daylight.
Amidst the darkness, there’s a lot to learn. There’s a lot of room for improvement. It might take a while before you see that, but trust me, you will.
Until then, be kind to yourself. Take your time. And know that this is simply another process that will, in due course, bring you closer to being the person you wish to someday become.
Mind Cafe’s Reset Your Mind: A Free 10-Day Email Course
We’re offering a free course to all of our new subscribers as a thank you for your continued support. When you sign up using this link, we’ll send you tips on how to boost mental clarity and focus every two days.