Turn Struggles into Strength

Adrian S. Potter
3 min readAug 4, 2021

Life is guaranteed to knock you on your ass.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

The Secondhand Inspiration Project begins with a motivational quote and ventures wherever the creative path meanders.

“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger

You probably never had a random stranger scream in your face to help you recognize the truth, but I have no problem figuratively being that guy.

You are going to lose sometimes.

You can study all the self-help books, exude confidence, fake-it-until-you make-it-look-easy, and micromanage every variable. It doesn’t matter. At some point, you will eventually crash and burn in your career, school, sports, relationships, etc.

But it’s not all bad. Your success depends on those failures.

If you can consistently train yourself to bounce back from defeats, you will kick butt over the long haul. Remaining upbeat despite setbacks and siphoning knowledge from life’s trials will allow you to sidestep similar pitfalls in the future.

So how can you calibrate your mindset to accomplish this? It’s simple, though not necessarily easy.

--

--

Adrian S. Potter

Antisocial Extrovert · Writer and Poet, Engineer, Consultant, Public Speaker · Writing about self-improvement, gratitude, and creativity · www.adrianspotter.com