{"id":124840,"date":"2024-03-24T10:42:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-24T14:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=124840"},"modified":"2024-03-27T13:45:03","modified_gmt":"2024-03-27T17:45:03","slug":"adversity-in-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/adversity-in-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Adversity in Life: Why You&#8217;re Not Handling Hardships Right"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Do you experience adversity often? Do your strategies for overcoming adversities fail?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>William B. Irvine says that the Stoics perceived adversity not as a setback, but as a training ground, an opportunity for growth. We&#8217;ll explain Irvine\u2019s take on adversity\u2014what it is, how we typically respond to it, and why those responses don\u2019t work.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s look at how people typically handle adversity in life, and why it doesn&#8217;t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-we-all-experience-adversity\"><strong>We All Experience Adversity<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Irvine, <strong>our lives are defined by the constant presence of one thing: adversity.<\/strong> It affects us all and takes on numerous forms, from spilled coffee and stressful deadlines to the loss of a loved one or a failure to graduate from university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: The Stoics\u2019 intuition that adversity in life is ever-present evokes a central tenet of another ancient way of life\u2014Buddhism. According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/buddha-journey\/\">Buddha<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/first-noble-truth\/\">First Noble Truth<\/a> (one of the four statements at the core of Buddhist thought) is that <a href=\"https:\/\/tricycle.org\/magazine\/four-noble-truths\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">suffering, or <em>dukkha,<\/em> is universal and constant<\/a>. Both philosophies share the fundamental realization that life is inherently fraught with challenges and adversities; but as we\u2019ll see, each offers different solutions.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The key feature of such adversities, Irvine says, is that we can\u2019t always see them coming or prepare for them. Troubling events ranging from mundane daily challenges to significant, life-upending events are often unpredictable. Further, they have a variety of sources:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>We cause ourselves trouble<\/strong>, such as by failing to anticipate obstacles (for instance, a freak blizzard in April) or behaving in ways that create difficulty (such as by living in a messy, disorganized house).<\/li><li><strong>Other people cause us trouble<\/strong>, such as by getting into arguments with us, disrupting our plans, annoying us, or making choices that hurt our livelihoods or well-being.<\/li><li><strong>The natural world causes trouble<\/strong>, such as when the weather causes the power to go out or, more seriously, when the crops fail or a hurricane devastates your home.&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: Irvine\u2019s taxonomy of adversities again suggests the Buddha&#8217;s analysis of <em>dukkha.<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/mindworks.org\/blog\/buddhisms-three-types-of-suffering\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Buddhism highlights three types of suffering:<\/a> dukkha-dukkha (painful experiences), viparinama-dukkha (suffering due to change), and sankhara-dukkha (suffering due to the unsatisfactory nature of existence). Comparing these to Irvine\u2019s types, the first often manifests as miseries arising from our and others\u2019 actions. The latter two include adversities caused by factors beyond our control, like the natural world&#8217;s upheavals.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-we-handle-adversity-poorly-by-default\"><strong>We Handle Adversity Poorly by Default<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Though our lives are filled with adversity,<\/strong> Irvine contends that <strong>by default, most people aren\u2019t good at handling it.<\/strong> When some trouble comes along, people typically respond by getting upset. This can take a variety of forms, ranging from fear and anxiety to frustration, anger, or outright avoidance of the problem and how they feel. For example, if someone loses his wallet in a busy part of the city, he might react by fretting about someone stealing his cash or feeling angry about this unexpected inconvenience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: Although Irvine notes that our default reactions to adversity aren\u2019t effective, those reactions aren\u2019t really anyone\u2019s fault. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discovermagazine.com\/health\/fight-or-flight-why-our-caveman-brains-keep-getting-confused\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">We evolved to react to stressful situations with the fight-or-flight response,<\/a> a hormonal activation that kicks into action a host of physiological functions that make you breathe faster and leave you feeling wound-up and ready to act. Given this, take Irvine\u2019s comment less as a moral judgment and more as an observation that, with practice, we can understand and improve upon our standard wiring for stress responses.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Irvine, each of these reactions to adversity is a different way of externalizing the problem: We look for something outside of ourselves to blame. If someone is fearful or anxious, he might feel victimized\u2014\u201cwhy <em>me<\/em>, why does life do this to <em>me<\/em>?\u201d If he\u2019s instead frustrated or angry, he might feel attacked or targeted by misfortune\u2014\u201cI don\u2019t deserve this. This is unfair!\u201d In either case, Irvine says, <strong>these are ineffective responses to adversity:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>When you get angry, you harm yourself and those around you.<\/strong> Anger clouds your mind, making it difficult to solve the problem and, at the same time, putting you into a state of acute distress that can spread to others.<\/li><li><strong>When you grow fearful, you shrink away from effective action<\/strong> and hide within your comfort zone. You never learn to face life\u2019s challenges and thereby grow small, less resilient, and weak of character.&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: Irvine&#8217;s ideas about the emotional harm of ineffective responses to adversity underscore the necessity of emotional intelligence (EI), a concept popularized by Daniel Goleman in <a href=\"https:\/\/shortform.com\/app\/book\/emotional-intelligence\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Emotional Intelligence<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em> Goleman argues that EI\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/shortform.com\/app\/book\/emotional-intelligence#emotional-intelligence\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">which encompasses self-awareness, self-regulation, and empathy<\/a>\u2014helps you to understand, manage, and effectively navigate your emotions. In doing so, you can avoid the harm that, according to Irvine, comes when you mismanage your response to adversity.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As to more significant adversity, Irvine says that <strong>in the aftermath of real loss<\/strong> (such as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/death-of-a-loved-one\/\">death of a loved one<\/a> or the end of a romantic relationship), <strong>we often get too wrapped up in our grieving.<\/strong> Traditionally, the Stoics acknowledged a small amount of grief as necessary but argued that any more came from self-centered guilt and a desire to make your sadness known so that others would comfort you. Further, Irvine says that grief counseling can undermine your resilience by coddling you when you could instead be growing tougher.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: Irvine&#8217;s &#8220;tough love&#8221; stance toward grief, which emphasizes independent resilience, contrasts with current psychological theories on grief counseling. These theories often advocate <a href=\"https:\/\/online.maryville.edu\/blog\/grief-counseling\/#benefits-of-grief-counseling\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">involving yourself in your emotions in order to fully process what you feel<\/a>. Studies suggest that grief counseling can work, helping people to cope with, accept, and grow past difficult events. While this contradicts Irvine&#8217;s contention that you need resilience training or you\u2019ll become weak, it\u2019s reasonable to infer that there\u2019s more than one way to navigate loss. For any person, either method\u2014or another altogether\u2014may work.)&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you experience adversity often? Do your strategies for overcoming adversities fail? William B. Irvine says that the Stoics perceived adversity not as a setback, but as a training ground, an opportunity for growth. We&#8217;ll explain Irvine\u2019s take on adversity\u2014what it is, how we typically respond to it, and why those responses don\u2019t work.&nbsp;&nbsp; Let&#8217;s look at how people typically handle adversity in life, and why it doesn&#8217;t work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":125027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,21],"tags":[1429],"class_list":["post-124840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","category-philosophy","tag-the-stoic-challenge","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Adversity in Life: Why You&#039;re Not Handling Hardships Right - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Everyone experiences adversity, even if we don&#039;t want to. 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