Adversity as Fuel

As the seasons shift, many of us feel a change within ourselves too. The days get shorter, the air colder, and life throws in its own storms too. Hardship, often, arrives unannounced. 

As the old saying goes, “adversity introduces a person to themselves.”

Whether mercury is in retrograde or not, sometimes the world gets on top of us. The car breaks, the boiler leaks, people let us down, or work demands pile up until it all feels unbearable. Sometimes, our instinct is to retreat, burying our heads in the sand, hoping we can hide until the TV License lot get bored of knocking.

Unfortunately, the real task is to recognise these (sometimes series of) moments as the forge where our character is made.

Ancient Wisdom

Marcus Aurelius reminds us: “All men suffer, but not all men pity themselves.”

That is to say: BS is inevitable. How we meet it, though, is where true performance lies. In Adlerian psychology, this is understood as the separation of tasks, to decide what’s in our control and what’s beyond it.

Imagine, or perhaps realise, you have 23 things on your mind, all gnawing at your attention span, anxieties and expectations. Only by deciding which things you have a semblance of agency over can you determine what requires effort, and what’s out of your hands.

Responsibilities, decisions and uncertainty pile up as we age. We long for the simplicity of youth, when the greatest worry was passing an exam or avoiding embarrassment at a party. 

Those days are gone. As they must be. To wish them back is to waste the adversity in front of us.

Epictetus asked: “What would Hercules have been if there had not been such a lion, and hydra, and stag, and boar, and certain unjust and bestial men?”

Without challenge, Hercules would have remained ordinary. The struggle made him a legend.

So, too, for us. For you. The hardships we face now—the late-night worries, the broken plans, the confusion of choice—these are our labours. They reveal who we are; who we can become. In avoidance, rob ourselves of growth. Only by leaning into them can we give ourselves the gift of transformation.

Not So Fast

In the modern world, this is harder than ever. 

The endless chatter of “shoulds” clutters our minds: Should I start a business? Fix the car? Call a relative? Read more? Exercise more? Earn more? We compare ourselves to others, imagining they have life figured out while we stumble through our own mess. But comparison blinds us to the truth: everyone is simmering in their private crises. Everyone wrestles with doubt.

The very fact that you hear the restless inner monologue means something vital: you care. You are alive to possibility. You want to do better.

This is why Adler’s insights, though written a century ago, still strike so deeply. 

“Your life is not something that someone gives you,” Kishimi and Koga write, building on Adler’s framework, “but something you choose yourself, and you are the one who decides how you live.” This psychology acknowledges our sacred autonomy but also insists that meaning emerges from perspective.

Stoicism echoes this: control what you can, accept what you cannot, and recognise that your character and actions are the only true possession you ever have.

As the seasons turn, let us see the shortening days not as darkness closing in, but as an invitation to dig deeper. Think of it as nature’s hormesis: a training ground where conditions grow harder so that we may grow stronger. The arrival of autumn is a whisper from the world, reminding you that you contain multides.

There’s a Chinese proverb: “He who blames others has a long journey to go. He who blames himself is halfway there. He who blames no one has arrived.”

The path forward is not about fault but about ownership. Owning your choices, your growth, your resilience.

The modern climate is unrelenting in so many ways. If you can view adversity as an introduction to yourself, the dull blade of overwhelm can be sharpened into a tool to carve out the shape of the person you can become.