I received an invitation today to an event where the speaker’s goal is to make her clients feel safe and secure during life’s challenges. I won’t be attending. The experiences of Hurricane Harvey solidify my reasoning.
Life is challenging. As the late Scott Peck’s oft-used quote states, “Life is difficult.” He adds, “This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.” Amidst this great truth, should we be seeking ways to feel safe and secure, or should we be honing strengths and mindset to survive and thrive with the reality of challenge? The goal of feeling safe and secure seems less beneficial in life than the ability and confidence to face challenges with courage and resilience. To know you have the courage, wisdom, confidence, optimism, focus and wherewithal to cope with whatever life brings is more powerful than seeking the feelings of safety and security.
Life’s challenges are not survived by seeking safety; life’s difficulties do not hone us (iron sharpens iron) if we strive for security. Growing in and with life’s opportunities and challenges requires grit. Great adventures, inventions, discoveries and accomplishments have been achieved through risk. Different people have different impressions of what it means to feel safe; doing things safely does not equate to seeking safety in life.
I wrote LIFElines: Empowering All Aspects of Your Life to reveal to others how the life they’ve lived and the experiences they’ve had empower their lives. One can find joy, happiness, satisfaction and purpose because of the life you’ve had, not despite it. I remind others, “It’s all good. It may not all be pleasant, but it’s all good.”
The Harvey victims that I had the honor to help are strong and resilient. They understood that nothing in life is perpetually safe and secure. Basing life on feeling safe and secure all the time as a goal is to position one’s self for tremendous shock and disappointment as the water rises, the blood tests results come back, or the pink slip arrives. It is far better to know of your own courage and resilience than to feel safe and secure. Life is difficult, and that is a great truth.