Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.

Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity. – Og Mandino

A displaced flood victim smiles despite adversity.

What does that mean?
This saying reminds us that there is a silver lining to every cloud. In anything that goes wrong, you can learn from the experience (ask Thomas Edison – he spent quite some time finding out ways to make light-bulbs that didn’t work).

Whatever happens to you, it is a chance to find out what happens if you do it. Now you know, and you can try something else next time. Even if an event is painful, you can still find some small victory. If you fight city hall, but lose, at least you stood up for yourself, right?

Why is seeing the good in everything important? 
If you don’t, you certainly won’t be invited to many parties. Do you really want to look at everything that doesn’t work out the way you wanted as an abject failure? Down that path, I imagine sadness, depression and even insanity may well lurk. It’s not a road I would want to travel, would you?

Seeing the good in events allows you to maintain a relatively positive outlook on life. There will always be ups and downs, but if you can find even a glimmer of hope, it’s not all bad. There have been any number of characters in books and movies that, despite being rejected by a girl, he keeps asking, saying that “Even though she hasn’t said yes, she hasn’t said no either!”

A positive attitude is a very valuable thing to have. This saying helps us keep a positive attitude even in dark times. When everything seems to be against us, if we can find the one glimmer of hope, we can keep on going. No matter what the odds, we can keep our attitude, and our hope, alive.

Where can I apply this in my life?
To start with, I would make a list of all the things that have gone wrong in your life recently. Anything that didn’t turn out right, from cooking a meal to a business deal. Anything and everything, write it down on some paper, one disaster per line.

Hopefully you balked just a bit when I asked for everything that went wrong, and then called them all disasters. I imagine you said something about not all of them being disasters, some were only minor failures. If that’s what happened, you’re already doing it!

If you didn’t want to call them all disasters, then you probably found a tiny seed of triumph in at least a few of the events, right? That’s a good foundation. Now, let’s build on it. For each event you put on the list (you did finish the list, right?), brainstorm and come up with a few ideas as to what you could take as a triumph or lesson from each.

You did finish the list, right? I hope you found a few things for each ‘disaster.’ Start to look for the good in everything that happens. You might not have the winning bid for the house you wanted, but look, another house just came on the market that’s even better. You might not have landed the promotion, but you don’t have the ulcer to go with it. There is a fine line between “sour grapes” and finding a silver lining, so be careful.

Sometimes it takes a little distance to be able to see an event clearly. When I got divorced, there wasn’t much that I could think of that was good in any way. After a few months, I was able to begin a better assessment of what had happened, and started learning lessons from my mistakes. Eventually (after a year or two), I realized how much better I knew myself and how much stronger I had become as a person. To me, it was my crucible, where I was fire-tested. Now I can see the triumph contained within the adversity.

Life will happen as it will. Events will happen, some will end well, and some won’t. The most important part of life is how you treat triumph and disaster (hint: they’re both impostors). They are simply events and they have happened. Deal with it. The better you are at finding the triumph within each adversity, the more fulfilling your life will be.

From: Twitter, @GreatestQuotes
confirmed at : http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/o/ogmandino157857.html
Photo by Meanest Indian