adversity - problems - risk

Face a challenge and find joy
in the capacity to meet it.

Ayn Rand

   

If we do not rise to the challenge of our unique capacity to shape our lives, to seek the kinds of growth that we find individually fulfilling, then we can have no security:  we will live in a world of sham, in which our selves are determined by the will of others, in which we will be constantly buffeted and increasingly isolated by the changes round us.

Nena O'Neil

      
Opposition is a natural part of life.  Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition--such as lifting weights--we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity.

Stephen R Covey
  

The ultimate measure of a person is not where he or she stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he or she stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

   

Every result you get in your life is the combination of the challenge you receive from the reality around you and your capacity to respond to that challenge.

Fred Kofman
   
   
Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew.  They're what makes the instrument stretch--what makes you go beyond the norm.

Cicely Tyson

   

I've often thought that when something is hard for you,
whether it's going to law school or anything else that
challenges you, that's probably what you should do.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

   

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You have to meet all of the challenges, big and small.
Because how you start is how you finish.

Bernie Mac

  

It’s been a tough year. . . Someone said I should send out Buddhist
thank-you cards since Buddhists believe that anything that
challenges you makes you pull yourself together.


Robin Williams

   

As we rise to meet the challenges that are a natural part of
living, we awaken to our many undiscovered gifts,
to our inner power and our purpose.

Susan L. Taylor

     
There are no laurels in life. . . just new challenges.

Katharine Hepburn

Skillful captains gain their reputation from storms and tempests.

Epicurus

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you;
they're supposed to help you discover who you are.

Bernice Johnson

The most rewarding things you do in life are often the ones that look like they cannot be done.

Arnold Palmer

   

   

Give yourself an even greater challenge than the one
you are trying to master and you will develop the
powers necessary to overcome the original difficulty.

William Bennett

   

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves
come when life seems most challenging.

Joseph Campbell

Accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.

George S. Patton

  

I have always grown from my problems and challenges, from
the things that don't work out; that's when I've really learned.

Carol Burnett

  

Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth.
Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.

Noela Evans

   

Above all, challenge yourself.  You may well surprise yourself
at what strengths you have, what you can accomplish.

Cecile M. Springer

   

   

There is no challenge more challenging than the challenge to improve yourself.

Michael F. Staley

  

Sometimes the darkest challenges, the most difficult lessons,
hold the greatest gems of light.

Barbara Marciniak
Family of Light

  

Always in the big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off
alone into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity
and excitement, a little nagging of dread.  It is the ancient fear of the
Unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into.

Wendell Berry

  

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Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you;
they're supposed to help you discover who you are.

Bernice Johnson Reagon

 

There are no great people in this world, only great
challenges which ordinary people rise to meet.

William Frederick Halsy, Jr.

 

To be successful you must accept all challenges that
come your way.  You can't accept just the ones you like.

Mike Gafka

  

Challenges are what make life interesting;
overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.

Joshua J. Marine

adversity - problems - risk

The big challenge is to become all that you have the possibility
of becoming.  You cannot believe what it does to the human spirit
to maximize your human potential and stretch yourself to the limit.

Jim Rohn

 

Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge.
Warriors cannot complain or regret anything.  Their lives are
an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be
good or bad.  Challenges are simply challenges.

Carlos Castaneda

  

The key to life is accepting challenges.  Once someone stops
doing this, that person is dead.

Bette Davis

  

We have some inspiring and motivational books that may interest you.  Our main way of supporting this site is through the sale of books, either physical copies or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the online reader).  All of the money that we earn through them comes back to the site in one way or another.  Just click on the picture to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and non-fiction!

   

   

Life is made up of a series of challenges designed to bring us
to fullness of growth.  Meeting them with hope in the future
is the real test of the spiritual person.

Joan Chittister

   

When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and
willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending
that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The
challenge will not wait. Life does not look back.

Paulo Coelho
The Devil and Miss Prym

   

We all have our limitations. Some of them are visible, while others
are not. As we go about everyday life and interact with people, we
are not aware of their health problems that limit activity. Some
people have accepted and adapted to their limitations,
while others have not.

Too many times our limitations keep us from doing activities we once
enjoyed and are capable of enjoying again. We are resistant to
change. We don’t want people to see us with limitations. We are
embarrassed by our handicaps. We decide that we will give up.

We need to change our views of what is possible. If we modify
the activity, it may be possible to once again enjoy life. There is
much more that we can do if only we try. We might have to relearn
it or use a new piece of equipment, but joy can return.

As we make progress in adapting to our limitations in one
component of our lives, it is easier to adapt in other components
as well. For example, I had to learn how to drive my van with hand
controls, since my feet are paralyzed. I trained my hands and arms
how to use the new controls to accelerate and brake. Other
modified activities that were introduced to me, such as snow skiing,
were easier for me to learn because I was more willing to take a
risk and accept my limitations. I have also resumed: biking, tennis,
golf, racquetball, ice skating, and horse back riding. Adaptive
equipment makes these sports fit my lifestyle.

My message to you is look at your life. Look at the challenges
and the troubles that you’ve got, and realize that you’ve got
to adapt. You’ve got to look at yourself and your situation a little
differently. It may not be over. It may be just beginning.

Rosemarie Rossetti

    
  
Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them
master you.  Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.  When
we do the best we can, we never know what miracle
is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

Helen Keller
  

The brick walls are there for a reason.  The brick walls are not there to keep
us out.  The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we
want something.  Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who
don’t want it badly enough.  They’re there to stop the other people.

Randy Pausch
The Last Lecture

  

If we are not allowed to deal with small problems, we will be destroyed
by slightly larger ones.  When we come to understand this, we live our
lives not avoiding problems, but welcoming them them as challenges that
will strengthen us so that we can be victorious in the future.

Jim Stovall
The Ultimate Gift

   

  
To remain indifferent to the challenges we face is indefensible.  If the goal
is noble, whether or not it is realized within our lifetime is largely irrelevant.
What we must do therefore is to strive and persevere and never give up.

the Dalai Lama
  

Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments
in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times--although such
experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them.
The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched
to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.
Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.  For a child, it could
be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher
than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his or her
own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage.  For each
person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

  

It was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one's development
arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one's ability and beyond,
so that thereafter one has a new standard by which to judge oneself.

Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

   

        
    

Nogglz
This novel was written as a tribute to my mother and the town she grew up in--Crested Butte, Colorado, a mountain coal mining town.  The town of her youth bore no resemblance to the CB of today, though, and the town that I visited when I was young was filled with run-down houses and buildings.  It was a dying mining town until it was turned into a ski resort, and the town of the novel is an idea of what it might have become with a few more decades of neglect, when a trio of creatures escapes from a sealed-off mine intent on exacting revenge upon the people of the town.  They've been living in the mine and caverns for sixty years, and they're really, really mad.
A horror novel on this kind of website?  Of course, because reading can be fun, too.  It's not a gore-fest (I really do dislike those), but more a study of how people react to adversity, and how the sins of our fathers sometimes do come back to haunt us many, many years later.
$2.99 on Kindle.