Daily Gratitude: “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls;
the most massive characters are seared with scars.”

If you think back on your life and examine the scars on both your soul and your body, you’ll see the truth of this quote.

The areas on your skin where you have scars are often the strongest. It seems that the healing process knows that this area might be susceptible to further injury so it wants to keep it strong. Of course it’s more complicated than that but it’s a simple way to think of it.

If your heart has never been wrung out from loss, it doesn’t know what to feel or how to deal with it. But once it’s happened, the next time really is easier even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time. And when you can think clearly again, you can even benefit from the lessons it taught you.

You are most likely a much stronger person than you realize. So in some ways you might want to be grateful for the suffering you’ve endured. It will help you put things in perspective. And remember that gratitude is powerful and will help you endure whatever struggles you may encounter.

As usual i recommend taking an inventory and finding your scars and then figuring out how those scars have strengthened you!

Setbacks

Daily Gratitude: “Setbacks do more than facilitate progress. They reveal us to ourselves and to others. Without them, how would we ever discover what we are made of?”

We tend to think that the way to get to a destination is step by step always in a forward motion.

But if you look at mountain climbing you’ll see that sometimes you have to go down in order to find a better way to go up. Mountain climbing involves many ups and downs.

Setbacks are like that.

Our lives are more like mountain climbing than walking a straight road.

But there is no way to reach the mountain top if we are not willing to go farther from it from time to time.

Setbacks are common on the way to success. Ups and downs, successes and failures, happiness and sorrow in our lives are inevitable.

Yet, we ignore the way life works. We want every effort to bring us closer to the destination. We see every setback as a failure.

Challenges, setbacks, sorrow, and failures are built into our lives.

1. Setbacks are the way forward

When we face setbacks, we tend to think that we have “failed.” But in reality, we are moving forward.

A setback is not failure. Giving up the moment we face a setback is.

Why do we equate a setback with failure? It is because of our desire to always move forward. When something gets in our way, we feel defeated.

.When we align our expectations with the nature of the path, we stop wishing the mountain would behave differently and instead adjust ourselves to it.

2. Setbacks facilitate our progress

You cannot build muscle if it doesn’t face any resistance. You cannot become a good boxer if you only train with people who never punch back. If we don’t face setbacks, we will never know what we are capable of.

Without setbacks, how would we ever discover what we are made of?

We might even say that we are fortunate that setbacks come our way. A life without them would not be a success. It would but e emptiness—untested, unproven, unrealized.

3. Setbacks are external; moving forward is internal

In our world, things happen. It is hot; it is cold. We’re praised; we’re blamed; We get a raise; we get fired. Our toast is burnt.

These things happen to all of us. Not everything that happens in our life moves it forward.

Not everything that happens to us is personal. In fact, most of it is not.

But we take everything personally. It is our setback. It is our failure. We fail to realize that setbacks are external and impersonal. Our judgment clouds how we see them.

Setbacks are not failures until we decide they are.

Progress is not measured by external events, but by our internal response to them.

4. Even true failures can advance us

There are times when our setbacks are not part of the natural path forward. We make mistakes. We take wrong turns.

Even here, there is no reason to berate ourselves or give up. What appears to be a loss may be a lesson we need to learn.

There are no true failures when we continue to focus on the next step

We need to treat setbacks as part of the route, learn from them, and keep our focus on what we can do next.

Daily Gratitude: “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”

I thought this was pretty apropos at this time. Our world is loud right now and it can feel as if you can’t be heard or even seen unless you become bigger than life and louder too.

But that’s not necessary. As this quote says, you can simply whisper a few words and show that you have the courage of a lion.

Courage is about facing your fears – in whatever way you can. It may be simply opening a “window” and peeking at the fear for the first time, even if you jam the window shut after that simple glimpse.

No one can define courage for you. You define your own. Why? Because no one has your experience and background. They have not traveled the roads and bumps you have. So how could they know what courage is for you!

Those that are loud may be trying to hide other things. So take everything and everyone else with a grain of salt. Remember that just as they don’t know anything much about you, likewise you know not much about them. They don’t matter. You matter.

For some people, just getting up in the morning is a massive act of courage. It’s something they may hide but they should be proud.

Have a courage journal or add a section to your current journal. Record things every day that show something courageous you’ve done. Don’t be shy. Write it all down. Then when you’re feeling scared or incompetent, you can review it and gain some inner strength.

Start your courage journal today