The Problem with Overcoming Adversity

The Problem with Overcoming Adversity

Has Your Superpower Become Your Kryptonite?

In childhood, have you successfully overcome adversity? Meaning, when it came to sink or swim, you learned to swim? Or more often, out of a survival imperative, you didn’t even think about it…you just acted?

At some point in life, we all have faced circumstances we weren’t yet emotionally and physically developed for. We experienced abandonment. We experienced grief. We experienced trauma. But for many of us, without the help of a parent, we also figured out how to deal with it. Naturally, the pre-pubescent emotional muscles we’ve built to overcome our adversity feels like our unique superpower.

I’ll use an example from my own life.

Growing up, I learned it was unsafe to reach out for help or to complain. Early on, I developed traits of independence and hard work. I’d look down on others who needed extra help from parents or coaches. When I needed more results, I’d try harder. It worked. And while my superpower was that I felt I could achieve anything, my independence became my kryptonite.

In my late teens and early twenties, I encountered failure after failure. Yet I worked harder than everyone—a strategy that, in childhood, worked in spades—so I was miffed I didn’t get commensurate results. So what’d I do? I doubled down, yet kept experiencing failure.

Here was my blindspot that my superpower didn’t afford me: if others could do less and get better results from me (without me asking for help or complaining), why would they reward me? Why promote? Why invest? Why try? Ironically, when I’ve given less effort and instead, healthily learned to ask, advocate, and assert on my behalf, countless opportunities and easier relationships naturally flowed.

With this I ask you, “What superpower has become your kryptonite?” And take some time on this one. It could take a while.

| Is your strength of voicing your opinion preventing you from truly hearing others?

| Is your strength of deep compassion and undying loyalty to others preventing you from living your own life?

| Is your strength of efficiency and resourcefulness preventing you from doing the requisite sweat labor to get to the next level?

| Is your strength of not getting emotionally rattled (a.k.a. emotional repression and shutting off feelings) preventing you from experiencing the deep connection you long for?

| Is your strength of tenacity and loyalty in relationships—could be professional or personal—preventing you from pulling the eject cord on situations that are diving headfirst into the ground?

We all have superpowers. Many superpowers stem from adversity, of which, there’s underlying and undealt emotional trauma.

So if you’re flexing your superpower muscles yet not seeing commensurate results, take off the cape for a moment. Peel back a few layers. Your past and future self will thank you.