Dealing with matters on hand

By: InvestiGator Staff

When dealing with a tragedy, there are the people who just give up and let life pass them by, and there’s the people who take it in stride and make the best of it. The way that one copes with these terrible events all depends on your character and the decisions you make along the way.

The first group of people when faced with numerous difficult situations tend to just give up. Feeling like they have nothing worth fighting for anymore, they stop caring. This makes the situation worse and harder to cope with.

The second group cares. In- stead of giving up they continue to fight through their situation and make the best of it.

Take Lance Armstrong for instance. Diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1996 that spread to his lungs, abdomen, and brain, he continued to race in the Tour de France and won each year from 1999 to 2005. He won a multitude of awards as well, ranging from Athlete of the Year by ABC to Personality of the Year Over- seas by BBC. He also started the livestrong craze, raising more than $325 million dollars from the sale of the now famous yellow bracelets.

No matter what he was faced with, Armstrong used his condition to make a difference in the world, and didn’t give up. Although his condition looked grave at times, he persevered and pushed through his cancer, eventually leading him to recovery.

Learning from Armstrong and others’ strong character can help everyone when they are eventually struck by inevitable tragedy. Instead of giving up and thinking life will not go on, you should use the situation given to you in a positive way and conquer all negativity that comes along with it.

Not only do you have to have a positive attitude to get through the events that will come along in your life, but your friends and family also need to have the same outlook. Having a positive support system helps with coping and recovering from the devastation that occurs in our lives. With- out a support system, you can lose faith, hope, sanity, or all of the above in your journey of dealing with what has happened in your life.

In addition to fighting through the hardships and a good support system, believing in yourself is the best thing you can do to overcome the obstacles of trying times. If you do not think that you can survive, you will lose the strength to carry on.

Everyone will be struck with tragedy at some point in their life. Whether it is a death of someone close to you or be- ing diagnosed with an illness, it happens to the best of us. How we receive and deal with it, along with having a good support system and believing in ourselves is what makes everything worthwhile.