By: Christie Ruffino
Dynamic Professional Women’s Network, Inc.
www.dpwomen.com

One of the headline stories a week ago was about a professional athlete who, without an apparent reason, was denied the opportunity to experience an opportunity he worked so hard to achieve. Tiquan Underwood loved being a New England Patriot so much that he shaved their emblem into his hair but was tragically cut from the team on Saturday, just hours before the Super Bowl. To say that he was disappointed is an understatement, but during this adversity he remained honorable and positive. Although I was not able to find his exact quote, I heard one of his comments were that; God gives us difficult circumstances to overcome so we can become successful over-comers.

We all face challenges in life from time to time. There is no way to avoid this truth and there is no way to become exempt from the pain and suffering that usually accompanies it. Weather your specific challenge is as small as a minor traffic accident or as large as losing a loved one; or if it seems that you are faced with a regular supply of challenging times or you are fortunate to be fairly challenge free, we all have to do the best we can to overcome our personal challenges in the best way we can.

I think it is fair to say that while we are knee deep in our struggles, it is sometimes very hard to see any possible reason why anyone would have to endure such cruddy times. But when we have muddled through, overcome and looked back on the experience, most of the time we see how we learned some sort of lesson. And regardless of how big or small the lessons are, we always become stronger, smarter and more resilient to future tough times.

I myself feel like I have had my fair share of life’s challenges. I am not egotistical enough to believe that my challenges are bigger and more challenging than anyone else’s, nor do I believe that I have had more challenges then you or the rest of the world, but they have in fact been quite trying to me. I have always been fortunate enough to have a home and food to eat and I have always been blessed with good health and the talents to earn a decent income. I have been even more blessed to have two amazing children whom I could provide for and whom are caring and loving souls. But when I had to work long hours and spend many sleepless nights stressing about how I was going support my kids on my own while their dad successfully avoided providing any support for many years, I have to say the lessons were very hard to recognize. Looking back on those years however, I can see what good came out of it for me and my kids.

Fast forward to now. It is 2012 and I have created an organization that supports professional women by providing them the resources and the platform to succeed at building their own businesses to be able to provide for themselves and their family. But times are tough and I am on the front line of a tough economy observing many tough situations with my members who have failing and/or struggling businesses. We even had a difficult 2011 in DPWN trying to maintain and ride out the tough economy with my members which if continued, would have caused us to become entwined in a course that we may have not overcome. But, instead of giving up and giving in, I am looking at this as a golden opportunity to reinvent our organization to become an even bigger and better resource and platform for our members to succeed and prosper. (To read about the many DPWN improvements, read our DPWN News blog post)

Although I am not an business development expert nor do I dare to say that I have a fraction of the answers necessary to survive life unscathed, I can say that I have learned a few lessons along the way and I would like to share some of them with you in an attempt to allow you the opportunity to learn and grow from my experiences.

Christie’s 9 Step plan to overcome adversity and become a more stronger and prosperous you.

1. Mourn – First and most importantly, have a nice cry about where you are at in your situation. Before you can even contemplate recovery, you need to mourn the loss and accept the fact that what you had is forever gone. That is not to say that you will not ever have some version of that back, but it will never be the same.
2. Accept – Second, you must accept the reality of where you are right now and understand that it is no accident. I believe that everything happens for a purpose and a reason and at some point in your life you will come to understand what that may be.
3. Learn – Thirdly, you need to embrace your loss and take a good hard look at how you got in this position so you can learn from it. This may mean you need to ask for some honest input from your friends, family or colleagues regardless of how difficult it may be to hear.
4. Forgive – Next, you need to forgive yourself and/or anyone else who you may feel is responsible for your situation. Forgiveness is vital to free yourself and allow the opportunity for the successful outcome you plan to achieve.
5. Recognize – The next step is to recognize that you now have a golden opportunity to reinvent yourself and redefine your future to be bigger, better and more prosperous. Get truly excited to be blessed in this way.
6. Define – Next you will need to clearly define what your ideal end result looks like. Don’t be afraid in this process or feel ashamed to want something so amazing that you don’t want to share it with the world. You deserve the very best and if you believe it you will achieve it
7. Strategize – You will now need to strategize how you are going to accomplish your newly redefined goals and you must proceed differently that you have in the past. Do you know the definition of insanity? It is doing things the same and expecting different results. A key character trait of most successful people is that they are not opposed to recruiting help and wisdom from others to support their mission. Make it a priority to hire a career coach, a counselor or ask for help from a respected mentor to help you create strategies to ensure your future success.
8. Action Plan – Now that you have defined your new goals, created a strategy or game plan to accomplish your goals, you need to create a step-by-step action plan to implement that is measurable and is aligned with some sort of time frame. Break this plan down by year, month, week and by day so you can stay on track. Be purposeful and adopt an urgency mindset when creating this plan. It is sometimes easier to give ourselves an extended timetable with a project to ensure our success, but that does not really push us to make great things happen.
9. Reward – Finally you have to honestly predetermine what will provide you additional joy when you accomplish each step of achieving your plan. You will of course feel a great sense of pride and accomplishment when you have accomplished this new level of prosperity, but if you reward yourself with token gifts or treats along the way you will provide yourself with a system of positive conditioning that will further enhance your chances to succeed.

I hope you can find at least a few nuggets of value in this 9 step plan. I truly believe that our character is built upon the experiences we face, the decisions we make and the attitude we maintain when living through our experiences, but it is also our responsibility to equip ourselves the best we can by learning as many skills that we can to prevail.

Dream BIG, believe BIG, achieve BIG, and be BIG!!!!