Adversity is an inevitable part of life. Some, however, can have such a profound impact that you may feel lost, even for an extended period of time. A major advrsity, or a series of them, can even push you towards burnout or depression.
Yet, people respond to adversity differently. While one person may be completely overwhelmed, another seems to quickly process a similar situation and move on with life.
Why is that? And more importantly, how can you learn to handle adversity more effectively?
What makes something an adversity?
John Lennon once said,
"Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans."
This perfectly captures the essence of adversity. It’s often not the event itself that throws us off balance, but the way it disrupts our expectations.
For instance, we hope our parents will live long lives, but eventually, we’ll have to say goodbye. We believe our job is secure, until a round of layoffs unexpectedly includes us. Adversity is those unforeseen twists in life that clash with what we had hoped or planned for.
We often try to hold on to what feels good and predictable. We want the positive aspects of life to stay the same forever. But life is full of surprises—some of them painful.
It’s often those who cling the hardest to control and certainty who are hit the hardest when that control is taken away.
The Five Types of Adversity in Life
At some point, everyone faces adversity in life. No matter how well we prepare or how we approach life, some challenges are simply unavoidable. Broadly speaking, these can be categorized into five types of adversity, which we all encounter to varying degrees:
Emotional Adversity
This type of adversity is tied to how we feel in certain situations. For example, when we experience feelings of shame, anger, or sadness, even if we didn’t want or expect to feel that way.
During emotional adversity, we may feel sadness, guilt, or unhappiness. Sometimes, we can’t even pinpoint the exact cause, but the emotional weight still impacts us deeply.
Mental Adversity
Mental adversity occurs when we face significant challenges in our mental well-being, such as depression, burnout, or overwhelming anxiety. It can also involve a loss of self-confidence or self-worth.
As with emotional adversity, it’s often difficult to identify a single, clear cause. Nevertheless, these mental struggles can profoundly impact our daily lives.
Physical Adversity
Everyone experiences physical adversity at some point—whether it’s an illness, an injury like stubbing a toe, or more severe conditions like breaking a bone. Physical adversity includes anything that affects our physical health and can have a significant impact on how we feel and function.
Social Adversity
When our relationships with others are disrupted, we face social adversity. Examples include being bullied, going through a breakup, or losing a loved one. These challenges can deeply affect our emotional well-being and sense of connection to others.
Financial Adversity
Financial struggles are a common form of adversity. Whether it’s struggling to afford basic needs or being unable to pursue a financial goal, these difficulties can range in severity but often influence our sense of security and stability.
How Adversity Is Connected
In reality, these types of adversity are often interconnected, creating a ripple effect. For instance, losing your job (financial adversity) could lead to feelings of anxiety (mental adversity), which might trigger shame (emotional adversity). That shame could, in turn, create tension in your relationships (social adversity).
This chain reaction of adversity can greatly impact your resilience, and if it becomes overwhelming, the consequences can be severe. That’s why it’s essential to understand how adversity operates and to develop strategies for managing it, so you can emerge stronger from challenging times.
How Can You Better Handle Adversity?
Earlier, I wrote that the essence of adversity lies in the expectations you have about the future or a particular situation. The more you cling to how things should be, go, or turn out, the harder adversity feels when reality takes a different course. The key to handling adversity better is flexibility: learning to adapt and go with what life brings you.
This may sound philosophical, but how do you actually do that? After all, if a doctor suddenly tells you that you only have six months to live, or if you lose your job tomorrow and end up on the street with three children, it's understandable that such major adversity is hard to take lightly.
In reality, most adversity we encounter is far less severe than these extreme examples.
The first step, therefore, is to put adversity into perspective.
Put Adversity into Perspective
As humans, we have the ability to make things seem important—or not. Often, it's not the event itself that weighs heavily but the meaning we attach to it.
For instance, some people become completely frustrated if a cup of tea is accidentally spilled, while others barely react if their brand-new car gets damaged. This difference lies in how we perceive the importance of adversity—and how much significance we assign to it.
A key factor here is cognitive distortions, such as "predicting." Imagine that someone spills a cup of tea and predicts that everyone on the terrace will stare at them, think they're clumsy, or laugh at them. In that case, the spilled tea feels much worse than it would without such predictions.
By taking a step back and looking at the situation more objectively, you can better assess whether the adversity is truly as significant as it seems. Often, you'll realize that what initially felt dramatic isn't as bad as you thought. This awareness helps you respond to adversity more calmly and resiliently.
Recognize What You Can and Cannot Control
There are things in life over which you have full control, things where you can exert some influence, and situations that are entirely beyond your power. By consistently distinguishing between these and making this a way of life, you may find that life feels lighter and certain challenges become easier to navigate.
Take health, for example. You can strive for a healthy lifestyle and thereby exert some influence, but you cannot control whether or not you fall ill or when your time comes. My grandmother, for instance, smoked like a chimney, drank excessively her entire life, and still lived to be 87. On the other hand, a close friend of mine, who never smoked or drank, always ate healthily, and lived a balanced life, wasn’t as fortunate. Four months ago, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. A month ago, we had to say goodbye to her. She was just 47 years old and left behind two young children.
When you fight against things you cannot control, it becomes not only a struggle against the adversity itself but also against reality. That’s a battle you cannot win, and it will slowly drain you. The energy you need to recover from the adversity gets consumed by resisting the "injustice."
Accepting what lies beyond your control is not a sign of weakness but of wisdom. It allows you to focus your energy on what you can influence, enabling you to better cope with adversity and giving yourself the space to grow and move forward.
Learn to Accept
Recently, I was walking through the supermarket when I saw a child of about five years old lying on the floor, stomping and screaming, “I don’t want it, I don’t want it, I don’t want it!”
For children, this behavior is often seen as acceptable, depending on their age. But what about adults? They may not throw tantrums in the middle of a crowded supermarket, but their behavior can sometimes be surprisingly similar.
We are the conductors of our own lives, but even the best orchestra plays a wrong note now and then. And as the conductor, all you can do is guide – nothing more, nothing less. The rest is up to the orchestra, or in other words, life itself.
Learning to accept is an essential part of emotional maturity. It makes you stronger, more complete, and helps you heal both old and new wounds faster and more effectively.
Learn to Build Resilience
This article is really about becoming more resilient and learning how to bounce back from setbacks and adversity. Explaining exactly how to do that isn’t easy in an article like this, but resilience is something everyone can learn.
About 30 years ago, I sought coaching to develop this skill, and I highly recommend it to anyone. Today, after being very well trained for years, I’ve been providing resilience training and one-on-one coaching for over 20 years, though exclusively for executives.
If you’re facing significant setbacks and struggling to cope, feel free to reach out or leave a comment. If I can’t help you directly, I certainly know someone in my network who can support you in processing and overcoming your challenges.
