Why You Must Face Your Own Challenges

“Tough times never last, but tough people do.”---Robert H. Schuller

Life is full of challenges. Everyone faces his or her own lot according to his or her own portion. The way you face your own challenges is what determines your success or failure. Life favors only those who are able to stay focused and determined even when the going gets tough.

It may interest you to know that:

John Bunyan was confined to a prison cell and sorely punished for his religious beliefs yet he was able to write one of the finest pieces of English literature “The Pilgrim’s Progress” while in prison.

Professor Wole Soyinka wrote “The Man Died” while in solitary confinement in Nigerian prisons during the civil war, punished for his views on the war.

Robert Burns was illiterate, abysmally poor and a drunkard to the bargain. The world benefited immensely from his thoughts which he clothed in fine poetry.

John Milton wrote “Paradise Lost” when he was already blind.

Abraham Lincoln The 16^th president of the United States after failing many times in business and politics was so poor that he had to borrow money to pay the train fare to attend his own inauguration as president.

Beethoven one of the greatest music composers of all time lost his hearing before composing some of the master-pieces for which he is best remembered.

Thomas Edison was a partially-deaf school drop-out who became one of the greatest inventors of all time.

Florence Nightingale very weak, very ill and in her hospital bed managed to reorganize the hospitals in England.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32^nd president of the United States, suffering from infantile paralysis and in a wheel-chair managed to become one of the greatest presidents the United States has ever had.

Demosthenes stammered badly but he managed to become a renowned orator and the greatest orator in ancient Greece.

Napoleon Bonaparte overcame his lowly beginnings as a diminutive Private in the French Army to become a conquering General annexing a very large chunk of Europe.

Most people who managed to overcome big challenges in life somehow ended up great. There must therefore be some beneficial relationship between obstacles and success in life. This must have been the reason why Booker T. Washington argued that “you measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you had to overcome to reach your goals.”