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Laugh in the face of adversity. Yell at it, asks for more, hunger for more, hunger for growth. Oh, how great your mental stability will be when you laugh at adversity, yell, “Is that all you got”? Give me more because, in the face of adversity, I will grow stronger and stronger!
When the COVID-19 epidemic ends, you just may have missed out on a great opportunity if you cannot list where you have grown. When you begin to see the growth opportunities in the face of adversity, trials, and weakness, you will begin to hunger for adversity, you will learn of a venue that increases growth, you will want more. Prepare yourself now to grow. Growth needs adversity, you must come out of your comfort zone to grow, and that discomfort is found in adversity.
A failure in a trial is a sub-trial. Look at it as another growth opportunity and find growth in the failure.
COVID-19 is a test for all of us, and the questions on the test are not all the same; they differ for every one of us. I define a test as a venue that identifies your failures. You answer a question wrong or fail to produce, you have failed. Identify why you have failed, what variables led to the failure. Then implement a plan to ensure you train and prepare yourself. You will not fail again. That is growth right there. Especially when you desire to pass the test and currently lack the skills in stride, your motivations and desires lead to the discovering of hidden talents and strengths. You are now grateful for this test, trial, or adversity. Because had you not been faced with the test you would not have discovered the hiddent talents you now possese.
I had two choices, fail at my job, or look for a way to overcome the adversity thrown into my life at the worst time possible. I chose to find a way to overcome the hill to climb in my life, and because of this choice, I maintained success and grew because of it.
Suppose you haven’t bought on to the whole idea of growth through trials and adversity. I will provide you an example. Two injuries that led to growth. But what is very interesting is that the more I reflect on these past few years, I see more growth than I initially assumed. I will share my story. Through this adversity, I grew in the following ways: developed efficiency systems to organize access data, problem-solving / critical thinking worksheets, a passion for neuroscience, a shift in priorities toward family, and a stronger relationship with God.
2017 was the beginning of a rough couple of years. But I love them, and I’m grateful for this pain and misery because I have grown in the face of adversity.
Traumatic Brain Injuries: Comes With the Job, I Guess
14 March 2017, during a nighttime airborne operation with high-winds, I hit the ground extremely hard. I saw many stars, and these were not just the stars up in the sky but the stars from a raddle to my head. It was a rough night as many paratroopers of the Devil Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division met the trees. Several injuries that night, and I recall one paratrooper got in a fight with a port-a-john. It was a cold night, and the medics were tending to many paratroopers, so I just shook it off and let them focus on those younger warriors. One brother was so far up in the trees that a cherry picker had to retrieve him. Poor guy was frozen in the 25-degree weather by the time they retrieved him.
The next morning, I did not feel right; I was nauseous, my head hurt, and I could not remember what I had planned at work for the day. After talking to my mother on the phone, all confused, I decided to see a Dr. Therefore, I went to the aid station, where I was diagnosed with a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). I was on quarters for a couple of weeks, and then upon returning to work, there were many short-term memory issues. There had been some noticeable damage to my pre-frontal lobe region. A month later, I begin my job as a battalion operations officer.
However, there was more to be added to this trial. Just a few months later, on 9 December 2017, during a massive Joint training event, a capstone exercise at the Air Force Weapons School, Joint Force Entry Vulnerability Exercise, I suffered another brain injury; this one far worse than the one in March. Two C-17 aircraft full of Panther Paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division flew from Fort Bragg towards Area 51 in Nevada, preparing to jump into Keno Drop Zone. From that night, I recall exiting the aircraft. The next thing I remember, we are at Nellis Air Force Base, I have cactus in my face, and I am asking everyone what just happened. One would ask why I would be back at jumping out of planes again a few months after a TBI. Well, that’s just the culture in the 82nd Airborne. I couldn’t quit or not participate in airborne operations. My career would suffer if I chose personal health over the mission. This decision was a self-imposed trial and a mistake, a failure where I placed the blind followership of military toxic leaders over caring for my family by caring for my health. Yet, I grew still.
My adversity was a constant short-term memory loss. When short-term memory was critical for my job, my brain was not functioning; I had to find a way to retain short-term memory when my mind was failing too.
This time it appears that I had suffered Transient global amnesia (TGA). During a TGA, short-term memories are not stored. Therefore, upon hitting the ground, I gathered up all my equipment, made my way to the assembly area, boarded the plane, and flew to Nelis Air Force Base. However, I do not recall any of this event though I was moving around, as if everything was normal. Moreover, this began great adversity that I would now have to overcome. My adversity was a constant short-term memory loss. When short-term memory was critical for my job, my brain was not functioning; I had to find a way to retain short-term memory when my mind failed to do so.
My Opportunity to Choose Growth
This adversity of Short-term memory malfunction intensified. I was six months into a two-year requirement, serving as an operation officer and then executive officer for a 538 person battalion while serving as the nation’s Global Response Force for the country. Both TBI’s impacted short-term memory along with my ability to maintain mental momentum. The region responsible for short-term memory within my brain was not functioning correctly. I was having all kinds of memory issues; for example, I would schedule a weapons range and then talk to my boss about the range and then a few minutes later completely forget critical points of discussion. I was not able to provide the support required of me.
This trial was not going away, nor was our unit’s requirements. Where my brain had failed, I needed to find a way to store and organize information in a manual method. At the same time, I found that cognitive distortions increased. I would perceive that others were judging me and looking at my ability. My self-efficacy began to drop. I had two choices, fail at my job, or look for a way to overcome the adversity thrown into my life at the worst time possible. I chose to find a way to overcome the hill to climb in my life, and because of this choice, I maintained success and grew because of it.
I found that after a month straight of daily reading, reflecting, researching, and writing, my mind became a cognitive machine breaking down and analyzing everything around me. Simultaneously, my memory improved through brain plasticity, my executive functioning improved, and my love for neuroscience grew – as most of my research focused on the brain.
Two TBI’s became blessings in disguise. My determination to not fail fueled my desire to find alternate methods to store memories. Memory loss led to developing new talents, creating systems, and organizing data to retrieve the memories I needed. Through cognitive exercises and going through therapy with the Intrepid Spirit concussion clinic, my short-term memory issues normalized. I had now developed additional talents and skills in organizing data; these are talents and skills that I otherwise would not have developed had I not been faced with this adversity.
One morning while doing one of the prescribed brain workouts, I recalled a paper I wrote on Alzheimer’s in my graduate program in Adult Education. I had researched brain plasticity and regrowth of damaged brain cells as a result of aging or injury. I thought to myself, hey, I know exactly what to do. I know that I can regrow the damage, and I know how to do it. This reflective thinking led to what I call my cognitive workout schedule. On top of the brain exercises prescribed, I began to do daily cognition, which consisted of reading, researching, and writing my thoughts. Many of these thoughts will be found here on my blog. The true growth lies in the talent I developed in critical thinking and analyzing all environmental variables.
Growth in Unexpected Areas
I found that after a month straight of daily reading, reflecting, researching, and writing, my mind became a cognitive machine breaking down and analyzing everything around me. Simultaneously, my memory improved through brain plasticity, my executive functioning improved, and my love for neuroscience grew; my ability to choose what I would allow causing stress in my life improved – as most of my research focused on the brain.
Growth like this happens all around us. I learned of a man named David Boies in Malcolm Gladwell’s book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants. Boies, born dyslexic, graduated high school with very poor grades and had a strong desire to become a lawyer. As a lawyer, we all know that it requires a lot of reading, preparing for cases. His strong desire to become a lawyer fueled his motivation to bust through this trial. He began to teach himself techniques to organize data in his head. He learned ways to take in connect the information to aid in memorization. Overcoming dyslexia opened the door for developing new talents that enabled him to be one of the world’s top lawyers.
Change Your Perspective Now
Imagine how much easier it would be to overcome trials when you look at them as doors opening for growth and success. When we face difficulty, weakness, or any form of adversity, an opportunity for growth is presented before us. We should not look at our trials and complain. Do not ask why me. We should ask ourselves, why not me? Better yet, say where me? Where within my life can I grow? With this attitude, you will look at trials differently.
When I say where me, you need to focus on a few different elements within your life. These are the elements of social, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and physical. When you face a trial, you must do a self-analysis and discover growth opportunities. However, it may be challenging to determine where the growth may lie in the face of a trial. You can prepare yourself now for any future adversity that will enter your life by creating a list of areas where you want to grow. Where do you need to grow? Look across these elements of social, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and physical. Areas of growth could be learning a new language, getting along with those who disagree with you—forcing yourself to learn about a politician that differs from your values—learning to be self-reliant, developing skills to survive as more natural disasters enter our society.
As you focus on your determined areas of growth, you will find that you grew in other areas that you didn’t expect growth as I sit back and look at the trials of COVID-19 combined with my study of neuroscience and the effects of stress and hate on the body. I realized that my communication via social media demonstrating my political/ideological beliefs were not always Christ like. I learned that my behavior wasn’t Christ-like and that these types of social media behaviors also are damaging to one’s body due to the results of the body’s stress response. I now evaluate my comments on social media before posting. Confirming first that my comments allow for growth and not contention before posting.
How many of you have grown in the face of COVID-19? When COVID-19 has passed by, will you be able to list every aspect where you have grown? Will you be a survivor or a grower? If you are a survivor, you are resilient, but we need to be more than resilient. Resiliency is when you can recover back to your normal state; you survived. I drop my iPhone with its case; it is resilient, it survived, but it did not grow. We must find ways to grow in the face of adversity. When the COVID-19 epidemic passes by, and you have not grown, you have only survived. You have just wasted an excellent opportunity to grow.
Make your list now; where do you need to grow. When that next trial comes in your life, and it will be soon. Pull out your list and determine which of your areas of growth can be applied to this trial. If none of the items on your list match the trial, that’s ok. Look at the trial and face it anyway, head-on. I guarantee there will be some growth found. And if you fail, that is ok too. Because a failure has provided a growth opportunity. A failure in a trial is a sub-trial. Look at it as another growth opportunity and find growth in the failure. Then hunger and anticipate the next mountain that you will face.
Prepare yourself now to grow. Laugh in the face of adversity. Yell at it, asks for more, hunger for more, hunger for growth. Oh, how excellent your mental stability will be when you laugh at adversity, yell, “Is that all you got”? Give me more because, in the face of adversity, I will grow stronger and healthier!
Keep it up. This is some could stuff.