Facing Challenges with Courage and Character

By Phil Bolsta

How you feel about a challenge depends on how you choose to deal with it. It will either get the best of you or bring out the best in you.

Providence has hidden a charm in difficult undertakings,
which is appreciated only by those who dare to grapple
with them.

Madame Swetchine

It matters not whether you are caught in a spring shower or a raging thunderstorm. What matters is whether you seize the opportunity to better yourself.

The things that happen to us do not matter; what
we become through them does.

Sri Gyanamata

Viewed through God’s eyes, every challenge becomes a vehicle for self-expression, a chance to react to the circumstances at hand with love, courage, and integrity.

It is almost more important how a person takes his
fate than what it is.

Wilhelm von Humboldt

No matter how much discomfort it brings, every difficulty calls forth the heroic, noble qualities of your soul.

Ultimately, there is no way to avoid the hero’s quest.
It comes and finds us if we do not move out bravely to
meet it.

Carol Pearson

How heroically you answer that call determines how fully you realize your divine potential.

Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness;
a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster-children
into strength and athletic proportion.

William Cullen Bryant

Celebrate the difficult moments, for they are where the missing pieces of your greatness can be found.

Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can
become bitter and give up. They happen to break you
down and build you up so you can be all that you were
intended to be.

Charlie “Tremendous” Jones

You would be an unfinished version of yourself —a block of marble untouched by the sculptor’s hand — had you lived a life free of hardship and struggle.

If we banish the dragons, we banish the heroes.

Andrew Solomon

Greeting every challenge as a character-building exercise deepens your wisdom, sets the stage for inner victories, and summons the hero that lies within.

If God asks that you bend, bend and do not complain.
He is making you more flexible, and for this be thankful.

Meriel Stelliger

Adversity does not strengthen character so much as reveal it. As storm clouds gather, the radiant light of integrity shines ever more brightly.

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and
shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets
in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light
from within.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

In contrast, many who think themselves honest and law-abiding will happily slip through an ethical loophole if given the chance, rationalizing that nobody’s perfect, anyone else would do the same, and besides, life isn’t fair.

Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it a man
hardly knows whether he is honest or not.

Henry Fielding

It is true that life is not fair. It is also true that it is. It all depends on whether you are looking through God’s eyes or your own. Human justice can look very different than Divine justice.

Life is not fair, but life is not fair for everyone. 
That makes life fair.

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This excerpt is from Phil Bolsta’s book, Through God’s Eyes: Finding Peace and Purpose in a Troubled World. To order your copy, click here. Email Phil at godseyes@me.com to request for free the entire chapter, “Welcoming Adversity.”