March 15, 2014
I usually post my blogs on Tuesdays but I’ll be going away next week and decided to post it today for the benefit of those who appreciate my thoughts on mental health. As such, today I leave you with my next week’s thoughts.
For some time now I have come to realize that the reason other people may seem at peace or happy isn’t because they never experienced any tragedies or challenging circumstances. If you disagree with this last statement, I challenge you to read about some of the best success stories in our generation. I found that the more challenges and tragedies they had faced in life the stronger their personality and the stronger their success was. I personally continue to feed on those types of stories. Some time ago I read the story of Lisa Williams, who at age 7 almost died after being raped and physically abused. After she graduated from high school she occasionally sold her body, when she did not have a job, so that she could eat. However, she then made the decision to finish college while living out of her car and working two jobs.
She then chose to earn her master’s degree and eventually became a petroleum engineer. In August 2006 she became the founder of Living Water for Girls, a program that helps sexually exploited children across the U.S. start over. Today she is a pillar in her community and is the kind of person that if you came across would probably look at peace and confident not because she never faced challenges and tragedies but because she faced many hardships. She just turned those hardships into the building blocks for a stronger belief system that gave her the foundation to succeed beyond anyone’s expectation.
As such, it is somewhat naive for anyone to think that a person may seem happy, peaceful, or confident because they never experienced difficult times in their lives or that somehow your hardships are harder than anyone else ever had. It is very important to put that in perspective when working to eliminate your negative thoughts and change your belief system. If you cling to the believe that no one had a worse life than yours that is fine but then challenge yourself to show that you can be a bigger success story than those who, in your view, experienced lesser hardships than you and succeeded. Nothing should hold you back. Only your mind can do that.