Your Life: Abundant

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Here are nine stories of famous people - and some not-so-famous - who overcame adversity, going through tough times that most of us will never have to face, yet they became even tougher. 

Shark attack

When she was only 13 years-old, American surfer Bethany Hamilton lost her arm from a shark attack. A mere three weeks after the attack, she returned to surfing, eventually turning pro. Bethany wrote about her experience in her autobiography, Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family and Fighting to Get Back on the Board and continues to share her faith with audiences worldwide.

A life-altering illness

Before running for office and later becoming a four-time President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt had been paralyzed from the waist down by polio.

Academic struggles

A poor student throughout his academic career and unable to obtain a job in physics upon graduation, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein formulated the theory of...

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Going through a tough time has changed you, there's no doubt. The challenge is to take some time and reflect how that’s true for you. For example, the gifts that you get for going through and overcoming adversities may mean you are more:

• Mentally tough
• Persistent
• Tenacious
• Adaptable
• Flexible

So those are some of the gifts that you can get as you go through this adversity. But in order to claim them, you need resilience to go through and overcome adversity. 

These gifts that make you a different person. It’s important to have perspective on this. For example, you:

• No longer obsess about the little things
• Have a different perspective on life
• Find yourself laughing more
• Are more grateful
• Have more humility
• Value relationships more
• Have greater confidence
• Have more patience with others

Now adversity has equipped you with many gifts, if you just use them. I would encourage you to do some self-reflection on this and really...

Welcome, I'm Sandie Eggers, founder of Abundance Place and your sherpa -- or guide -- to building resilience.

I'm passionate about helping people like you who are experiencing rough times in life to build resilience so you can lead your life with greater tenacity, flexibility, and strength. 

In our journey together, I'll be bringing you some of the best science-based information out there and then translate that information into blogposts, courses, and more. 

I'll also share with you my personal experience or what I personally found most helpful in navigating adversity as I built resilience. 

Why am I so passionate about helping people like you build resilience? Because I know firsthand how important resilience is. 

My journey toward building resilience began many years ago, when I and my husband heard from Steve's surgeon giving us three options for his treatment, beginning with:  "Do nothing and be dead in a few days." 

With those words, my world...

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Adversity. It is inevitable. You can’t go around it, only through it. But how can you successfully overcome adversity so you will not be crushed but can come out of it a better person? That’s where building resilience comes in.

Below are some of the tools for building resilience and overcoming adversity. Although this is not an exhaustive list and many in one category could also fit in another, these tools are effective, and they may give you ideas for others. They are:

Physical

• Get regular sleep
• Eat healthy foods
• Get exercise
• Remember to breathe deeply and often
• Go to a place where you can yell, scream, kick, a floor size pillow (Wonder why this one is so specific? Well, it’s a technique that truly helped me get through some tough times.)
• Take a bath
• Go a sauna
• Go to a spa
• Get a massage
• Take a walk
• Take a run

Psychological

• Get perspective logically, realistically and assess your situation
• Be thankful and grateful, seeing the...

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The adversities we face have immediate effects. Some of them are:

• Loneliness
• Grief
• Drastically changed lives
• Feeling incomplete
• Drastically changed as a person
• More stress
  • Emotional
  • Physical
  • Economic
  • Psychological
  • Spiritual

Sometimes you’ll not just experience one of these effects, but many. For example, let’s say you were involved in a catastrophic accident, so now:

Your life is changed. Maybe you now need 24/7 nursing care. You and your family may be suffering from:

• Economic stress
• Emotional stress
• Loss of companionship
• Perhaps spiritual stress, as you’re now beginning to doubt the existence of God

This is not an exhaustive list; however, it does demonstrate the range of difficulties you may be going through due to just one incident of adversity. Adversity affects not only you but also your family and those in your close circle.

If experiencing adversity is inevitable and its effects many, how does one live in the face...

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According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “adversity” is defined as: “A state or instance of serious or continued difficulty or misfortune.” It comes from Middle English adversite, meaning "opposition, hostility, misfortune, or hardship."

Examples of adversity

Adversity. It is one of the threads of life. We can’t avoid facing adversity on this earth. It’s unavoidable. What kind of adversities am I talking about? Well, for example:

• Divorce
• Death of a spouse
• Death of a loved one
• Moving
• Financial setbacks like bankruptcy
• Serious illness
• Serious injury
• Catastrophic accident
• Loss of employment
• Unfulfilled desires, longings, and dreams
  • Of a partner
  • Children
  • Fulfilling work
  • Further education
  • Estrangement of a loved one
  • Wanting to belong
  • Feeling a loss in life or having a void, like a spiritual void

I’m sure I’ve missed something; this is not an exhaustive list. But it gives you an idea of what...

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Article inspiration: hat tip to:  https://www.openbible.info/topics/character_of_god

 Here are some Bible verses that expound upon the character of God: 

God is eternal

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. (Psalm 90:2) 

The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations. (Psalm 33:11) 

The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms. And he thrust out the enemy before you and said, Destroy. (Deuteronomy 33:27)

God is omnipotent

Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

   “Hallelujah!
  For the Lord our God
    the Almighty reigns." 
(Revelation 19:6, ESV)

But Jesus looked at them and...

There's more to Abundance Place than blogposts. There are brief, 3-point Bible studies, in-depth video Bible studies, Abundance Community Hub and more. 

Learn  more about the Abundance Place Premium Membership. 

In this post, we’ll take a look at some ways we can fight the information war on a spiritual level. In an earlier post, we discussed how to fight this war on a human level. And in a previous post, we examined the information warfare committed by both sides. 

Why the information war has a spiritual aspect.

As we battle in this information war, we are not just pitting information against information. It is not just a rational war of words; rather, we are also battling against vitriol, lies, and other soul-sucking weapons. Do you not often feel defeated, weary, mind-numb? Were this solely an intellectual exercise, you likely would not also feel depressed. There is a psychological dimension and, I would argue, a spiritual one as well. The way in which many people engage in this information war – tearing one another down, viciously attacking character, spewing hate – begs the question that there is more a foot here than merely an intellectual exercise. 

So...

In this post, we’ll take a look at some practical ways we can fight the information war on a human level. In another post, we’ll discuss how to fight this war on a spiritual level. And in an earlier post, we examined information warfare committed by both sides. 

All around us swirl a blizzard of lies that create the fog of information war. How do we begin to discern the truth from lies? How do we begin to truly see the facts and critically evaluate all of them? Looking at this from an entirely human perspective, here are seven suggestions:   

#1: Don’t be so quick to react.

Part of the challenge here is since many of us get our information from social media, we are trained to react quickly. It is the nature of the medium. We want that immediate response. We want to be the first to comment we want to be the first to post. However, doing so exclusively is really very, very dangerous, as not only are we not evaluating that information for ourselves, but...