(Sharing Resources to Help You Grow Personally, Professionally & Financially)

Sometimes it helps to get a little dose of encouragement -- along with a good cup of coffee! -- to start the day.

Hopefully the message below will help you get off to a good start for the week.  Please feel free to forward the newsletter on to others that you think would benefit from the content.

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Adversity

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For the next couple of months, I am going to draw motivation for my Monday Morning Motivation from Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. You can find a summary of this awesome book here. This book is one of my all-time favorites as it takes on the topic of “resistance,” which you might think of as that strange force that makes it difficult to accomplish things in life. Pressfield does an awesome job of describing what resistance is, discussing how to overcome it, and framing it in the context of a larger power.

When the going gets tough. The tough get going!

This one has ALWAYS appealed to me. For some strange reason, rarely do I see “problems.” Instead, almost always, I see opportunities.

Unfortunately, for many, encountering adversity can lead to crippling indecision and beliefs that things will NEVER get better. This “all or nothing” thinking is distorted and unhealthy. Just about every time we face adversity, we also face opportunity. No, I am NOT naïve – sometimes life really does suck. BUT, most of the time, it does not suck nearly as bad as some would have you believe.

Pressfield highlights that “professionals” know this to be true. They push through the adversity and persevere through the tough times. The results are amazing.

And you ARE a professional. And you DO have the ability to push through. And you CAN make something beautiful out of the ugliness you face. You just have to face the adversity head-on.

For the past few months, I have had the chance to witness someone do exactly this. This person and I have never been close, but we have always shared some similar paths in our life. We’ve both recently been in the gym. I’ve been admiring him and his work effort. A couple of months back I struck up a conversation with him. He seemed a bit off. And then I found out why. This person has been fighting cancer. He is facing some serious issues. And yet he is in the gym multiple times each week.

Over the past several months, I have made an effort to reach out to this person and do all I could to encourage and support him. Last week he had a huge smile on his face when he shared with me that he was undergoing his final round of chemo.

I have no idea what kind of adversity you are facing. Maybe it is worse than cancer. Maybe not. What I do know is that through adversity, we can grow if we choose to do so. And I hope that if I ever have to face something as serious as cancer that I am able to face the adversity with the dignity and class that this individual has shown me.

That brings us to this week’s question:

• Are you facing adversity head on and using it to become a better individual?

Thanks for sharing a bit of your time with me this Monday morning and I wish you all the best for the week.

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Blog post from this past week:

Monday Morning Motivation - Failure

At F5 Financial Planning, we focus on helping individuals and families find balance between faith, friends and family, fitness and finance.  We make sure that they have the financial freedom to enjoy those things in life that are important to them.  And while we believe the left-brain facts and data are critical; we work with our clients to get them in the right state of mind to focus on the goals they want to achieve.

Some other posts that you might like:

• Should You Pay Off Your Mortgage?
• How Are DFA Funds Different than Index Funds?
• How Families Can Calculate Retirement Income Wants Versus Needs
• What Your Grandma Taught You About Investing
• Making Sure You Can Collect a Paycheck in Retirement

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