Learning to bend with adversity rather than fight is a powerful way to take control of our lives. This week my family and I drove through yellowstone national park, I was impressed by some of the trees we saw on the way in from the east gate, they were all leaning east as though the canyon winds had been blowing hard for some time. This particular day was very windy as we were faced with a very strong head wind driving west. We soon crossed over the pass and found our way to Yellowstone Lake where the wind was whipping the lake in to big swells with two foot breakers. As the water churned from a bluish green to a muddy brown eating away at the shore line with its drift wood scattered beach, I was taken back to the trees, both under the same influence yet each responding differently. One was a swaying dance allowing each tree to live in unison with adversity and by doing so becoming stronger in its roots. The other, a destructive corrosive act displacing much of the life that had once clung to its sandy home, churning and thrashing in a different dance, one of inflicting will and ambivalence to its destruction. Before I had left my hot desert home in St. George for the cooler plains of Wyoming, I was speaking to one of my clients about this very principal, the more we fight adversity the more we prolong the storms that teach. When we learn bend and sway with the winds of adversity, we learn of our strengths thus becoming powerful. Just as the trees accepted the wind by leaning east, we can see the trials as apart of our journey and change how we see what is happening.
Seminar Director, Life Coach
TurningLeaf Wellness Center