Anything to be Discouraged About-Daily Meditation 1.27.23

Today’s quotation:

There is never really anything to be discouraged about because difficulties are opportunities for inner growth, and the greater the difficulty, the greater the opportunity for growth.-Peace Pilgrim

Today’s Meditation:

I used to get discouraged quite a lot when I was much younger.  Mostly, it happened because things didn’t turn out how I was trying to make them turn out or how I was sure they were supposed to turn out.  All my efforts seemed to be for naught because things weren’t getting better or easier–at least, not according to my definitions.

The change hasn’t come in how things turn out–the change has come in my perspective of life and living.  When something happens now that used to seem highly negative, I see opportunities for growth and change.  When I start feeling discouraged, I look for the positive in my life to counterbalance negative things.  Difficulties come along–at work, with money, with other people, with family–but they’re rarely as bad as I used to imagine.  And even if they are wrong, there are still positive elements of every situation if I only look for them.

Inner growth rarely occurs when things are going well.  It can be enjoyable when we’re coasting through life, but our learning opportunities come more often in the form of adversity rather than prosperity.  We grow when we’re unsure and afraid when we have to face a difficulty head-on and deal with it effectively.  That’s when we grow.

It would be nice to have an entire life without difficulties, wouldn’t it?  I would love to enjoy the world we’re in without facing adversity.  But we can enjoy the world, even with the troubles that come up–we have to learn not to allow those troubles to bring us down, to see them as opportunities for growth rather than as tragedies that we’d be better off without.

Questions to consider:

In what ways have you grown in the past during times of difficulty?

How do we learn to see adversity as something necessarily negative?

How might you learn to see the chances for growth in some of the problems that come up in your life?

For further thought:

If you will call your troubles experiences and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be.-John R. Miller

If you missed our last Daily Meditation, it is right here.