Three gifts within hardship (and how to recognize them)

If you’ve read my stories about practicing a resilient mindset, hopefully you’re on board with asking the question, “What might be the gift?” when life throws hardship at you. Maybe you’ve started practicing and using the question for small, run-of-the-mill challenges.

But now we have to address the elephant in the room. Because, at least a few times in our lives, all of us will face traumatic hardships that shape the rest of our lives. A death in the family. A harsh breakup. A financial crisis.

When that time comes, will we still be able to ask ourselves the question?

In 1980, Candy Lightner’s 13-year-old daughter was struck and killed by a drunk driver while walking to a church carnival. Lightner channeled her overwhelming grief and anger into the cause of stopping drunk driving. She founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), an organization that has been credited with saving more than 400,000 lives.

Losing a child is the most difficult loss a parent can go through. For many people, the story would end there…in tragedy. But Candy had another page to flip. Out of the tragedy came an incredible gift: thousands of lives saved. One of them could even be you.

Candy is an example of how, even during the most painful moments in life, you have to believe the story isn’t over yet.

Recognizing the Gift

Sometimes the gift buried within hardship is something tangible, like the baskets of mangos I gave away. But more often, especially after deeply painful hardships, it’s an intangible gift that comes in one of three forms:

• The gift of knowledge
• The gift of strength
• The gift of inspiration

The Gift of Knowledge: 

The gift of knowledge is relatively easy to spot. When we say someone has “street smarts”, that’s the gift of knowledge. They have faced hardship and learned valuable lessons as a direct result.

Anytime you come out of something difficult knowing something you didn’t know before, that’s the gift of knowledge.

The knowledge you acquire could be information, a hard skill, or a soft skill. Having a pitch rejected could teach you how to improve your pitching skills. A painful breakup could teach you what red flags to look out for in the future. It doesn’t feel good, but there’s always something to learn from a bad situation.

The Gift of Strength

The gift of strength is also easy to see. The phrase, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” is a reference to the gift of strength. When we go through hardship and come out the other side even tougher, we gain an understanding of our own strength. 

If you’ve endured verbal abuse in the past, insults from other people can seem trivial. Or if you’ve lived through poverty, you may already be far more resilient than the people around you.

Once again, I do not want to downplay the hardship. Recognizing the gift does not negate the pain. The point is not to paper over the challenge and slap on a happy face!

The Gift of Inspiration

The gift of inspiration can be tricky to understand, as the inspiration isn’t always a direct line. 

For example, I had a friend who lost his job unexpectedly. This sudden jolt to his career was a wake-up call that caused him to re-examine his life. He found a new job, but also changed his diet and started working out, resulting in a 50-pound weight loss. Getting laid off indirectly inspired him to regain his health. 

This, my friends, is the gift of inspiration in action. 

Finding a Path Forward

If there’s one thing you take away from today’s email, it’s this: The story is never over when you think it is. 

Asking yourself “What might be the gift?” is not denial, but an exercise in resilience. The purpose of the question is to change your perspective of the issue, so you can create a path forward and choose a better (or a less bad) outcome for yourself and those you care about. 

I hope you’ll be inspired to practice using this powerful question in your own life. If you decide to use it, please reply to this email and let me know how it goes.

All the best,

Wendy

This article about recognizing the gifts in painful situations is part of my Fresh Perspective series, delivered to your inbox each week.

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