Welcome Our Guest Blogger For The Month Of May: Brandon Ryan. As He Shares His Personal Story On The Importance Of Resilience

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brandon has been a supporter, and one of our greatest contributors of The Abler from the beginning, and we could not be more thrilled that he decided to share such an insiteful, and thought-provoking piece with us. If our readers would like to know more about Brandon, I highly suggest reading his latest. books The Emotional Struggle. The Emotional Struggle By Brandon Ryan 

As a kid I can remembering being a very sensitive soul, getting ready for my first surgery, the nervous sensation filling my stomach. Upon telling my mom how nervous I was, I threw up right in front of her. At such a young age, I didn’t know how to handle or process what was about to happen to me. All I knew is that doctors were going to leave me with a rather lengthy scar on my back. There was no way I could know or prepare for the kind of pain that would follow the operation. That morning of the operation, I can remember getting to Children’s Hospital, very early in the morning, going through the check in process, crying and being scared of getting my finger pricked by the nurses.

  Before I knew it, I was being escorted to another pre-operation, and being asked to put on a hospital gown. That’s when reality set in, and the tears began to come, my parents where asked to go sit in the waiting area. All I can truly remember from that moment, is crying intensely and feeling utterly alone and scared. Recovery from this particular operation, as well as all the others, were extremely painful and took well of a year to recover from. What I hope to get across to you, is that you are more of a resilient warrior  than you allow yourself to believe at times. You are more capable and intelligent that even what others might believe of you. Trust me, doctors and educational professionals told me that I wouldn’t amount to much. And for such a long time, I allowed that lie to consume so much energy and head space that I truly became apathetic toward my own life.

I felt like a hopeless-lost cause. Little did I know, that I was smart, had massive potential and things to offer the world. I didn’t know that I was created to be a warrior, who could stand in the face of the darkest storm. What follows are few tips to be more resilient in your life and become the warrior that has always been inside you. 

Do things that make you uncomfortable this isn’t a popular method to growth and change, but if we want to become stronger in life, if we want to discover who we really are. We have to do things that you would rather not do. For example, this could mean tackling a subject in school that you have never been good at. This could mean studying harder and committing yourself to a life of discipline. Maybe you want to prove people wrong, by graduating with honors, well you have to work harder at it then the average person. And if it takes you longer, that’s okay. You can do it. I graduated college with honors and even made the deans list, I just had to get to point in my life, where I could say “screw you” to everyone who doubted me and work hard for the sake of my own path and not what someone else thought of me. The thing you don’t want to do, is sometimes the thing you need to do most. So make a list of things that make you uncomfortable, and work on getting better at them daily.

Stay calm in the storm challenges and various forms of hardship are bound for us all, many times in life we can’t prevent certain things from happening. But we can choose how to respond to them. As I said above, I used to be a very sensitive child, and I still am a bit, as an adult. But in the earlier stages of my life, I was more reactive to hardship, adversity and even rejection. I would get pissed off when things didn’t go my way, sometimes the smallest of things would send me into panic mode. For so long I believe that “that was how I was” a person. But one day, I thought to myself “you know, it isn’t cool getting upset or to flip out over the little things” I used to rejection so personally, to the point of despair. And I’ll admit that it sometimes still stings, but after a bit of time, I just shrug it off and move on with life. Life will bring you hardship and pain, but when it comes to us, we can acknowledge that it’s present. To a degree, we can even be thankful for it, because even hardship can bring us the greatest blessings and lessons. Sometimes it takes a certain amount of time, to recognize those blessings and lessons. But they will always appear to you. Also, know that all trials in life eventually pass. Yes, they may leave us with scars and bruises but they don’t have to destroy us.

Serve and comfort others life is not a one person story, more over it is about the people around us. When we discover who we are, the talents and passions that we have inside us. They are not tools to be kept to ourselves. Moreover those talents and passions were meant to serve the world around us. Its pretty straight forward to me. If you have the gift of making people smile, do that, if you have the ability to listen and comfort others, do so. If you have the ability to fix and create things for others, go and do that. When we take our gifts and talents, in the name of service to others. We are not only getting the attention off ourselves, off our own trials, but we are showing others that there is hope, hope to rise above and overcome even the most difficult circumstances. 

In closing, I know that these are only a few tips that carry much more depth and insight. But I just want  people to realize their own worth and potential. I want people to know that they can transcend the circumstances of their lives. Sometimes this discovery comes because some body else shows us the way out. Other times, we discover this truth by ourselves when we climb out from the bottom. Whatever obstacle that you are facing right now, whatever lie you are believing in your mind. Confront it. Stare it down. Realize the person you want to become, and start chasing after that, every single day of your life. Forget what happened yesterday. And press on toward the goal.