Personal Adversity Personal Narrative

Adversity Personal Narrative Handling adversity is something that all people must do throughout their lives, but it is the ways in which individuals approach adversity that sets us apart. There are two contrasting ways in which you can respond to adversity: 1) you can either curl up into a ball and accept the outcome as it is 2) you can take control of the situation and work hard to make the resulting outcome in your favor. I faced adversity within sports when I was diagnosed with a physical disorder as a child.

When I was young, I experienced frequent, unexplainable falls; whether I was playing a sport or just standing in place, I would end up on the ground. Eventually, my parents took me to a medical specialist, and I was diagnosed with low muscle tone. I was told that I would need to work hard every day just to become able to stand upright and that I should no longer compete in contact sports. As I just began playing football, this was devastating to me. After hearing the doctor’s diagnosis, I could have just accepted that I would never be the athlete I aspired to be or just given up on athletics all together. However, hearing him tell me that I could

I would get pounded on by the bigger and stronger players during practice and was discouraged early on. I thought about quitting within the first couple of months. However, when my family saw that I was having a hard time, and we sat down and talked about it. Even though the doctor suggested that I should never play contact sports, they believed in my capabilities and told me that if I worked harder than anybody else, nothing the doctor said would matter. As my first year of football came to an end, my dad began teaching me how to exercise. We lifted weights and ran together until I got the hang of it, then continued exercising on my own. I devoted all of my energy into everything I did, knowing that I had to improve each day in order to compare to the other