Adversity is a part of life we can’t escape. No matter who we are, where we live, how we think, or how we act, we all must face adversity at times.
Personal tragedies are the worst kind of adversity. Losing a job, a business, or a loved one is devastating. Some people never recover from such tragedies. They fall into a cycle of bitterness and hopelessness that never seems to subside.
Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino suffered through what is probably the toughest type of personal tragedy anyone could ever go through: the loss of his young child.
Here’s how Pitino says he dealt with this tragedy and the advice he offers others who are dealing with adversities of their own…
We couldn’t understand how God could have allowed this to happen. After Joanne had spent six months of fourteen-hour days, seven days a week, caring for our child; after finally getting our baby back to decent health, how could God do this to us and to Daniel?
Well, God didn’t do it. Life did it. Once we began viewing it that way we were finally able to start getting our lives back.
Eventually, we did not look at Daniel’s death as a way to blame God or anyone else. There are simply parts of life we can’t understand. It wasn’t God’s fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just the adventure of life being played out. We can’t understand why. The why is part of life’s mystery. We knew we had to accept this and return to our lives.
So Joanne and I were eventually able to move on by changing our attitude from pointless negativity to appreciation for the good we had.
That’s what mental toughness is about. When it comes to dealing with a personal tragedy, you have a choice. You can either succumb to it and have it drag you down, or you can fight through it and have it make you stronger. It can either cripple you and thwart your dreams or make you realize how precious life is and how you have to both seize the day and treasure the people to whom you are close.
You have a choice when it comes to dealing with life. You must remain rock-solid positive. Not because it’s necessarily the right way. Because it’s the only way.
– Rick Pitino, from his book Success Is a Choice
Pitino’s advice for bouncing back from tragedy certainly isn’t easy to follow. He makes it clear that he and his family had to go through a long grieving process before they were able to heal and shift their outlook.
Notice how Pitino says that choosing to shift his outlook was “the only way” to move forward. The pain was still there, the sadness was still there, the tragedy can never be forgotten or reversed; but Pitino says a shift occurred when he stopped asking, “Why me?” and started asking, “How am I going to deal with it?”
Pitino chose to shift his attitude. He chose to not let this tragedy drag him down. He chose to stop driving himself crazy by asking questions he would never be able to answer (such as why God would let this happen).
Pitino’s response to such a sad tragedy takes mental toughness to a whole new level and it’s extremely inspirational. If a father can use this technique to shift his attitude after such a tragic event, all of us should be able to use it when facing adversities both big and small.
Stop asking, “Why me?” and start asking, “How am I going to deal with this?” That simple shift will change your attitude and turn you from feeling passive and helpless to feeling proactive and in control.
