Reinvigorating Fortitude

People seldom face adversities in life that either challenges the way they cope with difficulties, or worse presents sufficient stress to a person's existence and resilience. Situations are varied, but the person's ability to endure these situations is crucial in the way one copes in the end. There is a term fortitude that simply denotes one's mental toughness or courage in the midst of pain and adversity. This is the greatest factor that aids one to learn from the situation, and be better prepared in case a similar serious, challenging situation confronts the individual again in the future.

Fortitude has three elements: will, courage and endurance. Will is the intention to stay on track, not until the desired end-result is achieved. On the other hand, courage is the acceptance that pain, adversities and temptation are part of the process. Accepting them, rather than ignoring them is the key to solving a problem, or enduring a negative experience. Lastly, endurance is the person's ability to bear the pain for a long period of time. Time is key, because many have the will and courage in the beginning, but loses the steam of endurance afterwards. The challenge in life is to reinvigorate fortitude to better face various experiences, either positive or negative.

Focus taken from purpose.

One must have focus in everything one does. It is the driving force of why people act on a certain way. It is actually the blanket the covers the negativity associated with a situation. People may think things will turn out better as long as they believe everything still coincides with their life path and purpose. This is actually very difficult for people who believes that they do have less self-worth or contribution to anything or something. Focusing on the person's strengths paves the way for one to nurture them, providing them the purpose which one could look into or focus on.

Reality-orientation is basic.

Acknowledging the fact is very important for courage starts with acceptance that sometimes things get rough. This is quite difficult for people who are overly optimistic, such that they lose orientation on the depth and seriousness of confronting situations. They believe things will turn out well, but has very little understanding of their own situation. The challenge lies on accepting and understanding fully the situation, then having the will power to do something better out of the situation. Recognizing the problem is foremost the first step to arriving to a solution.

Continuous effort is important.

Endurance refers to the road towards the end-result. The objective may have set, and the problem may have been understood well, but one may not have the energy to implement a plan to get something out of a situation. This is where most people fail. Many are impatient to wait and do something towards a desired outcome. One should do something regardless how little significant an action would be. The rule of thumb is to do something, even not knowing a particular action could yield into something. Continuous effort sets the mind to believe progress is made even there is no clear evidence of it. Just do it, as they say it.

The question of having fortitude is actually not as difficult as we think. All of us have some degree of fortitude, that inner mental and emotional strength that helps us face life's challenges. The problem is to whether such degree of fortitude in whatever means we gained it, is appropriate, sufficient and long-lasting for us to maintain a positive outlook and focus in spite of the darkness and vagueness of a situation that acutely affects an individual. What is important is one attempts to do something, rather than just be swallowed entirely hopelessly in a negative situation.