Curious about Coping and How You Cope with Challenges

“Coping rests on your shoulders. Forget ‘they.’ This is your life. Period.” Tom Peters, American businessman

“People ask, how do you cope, and all I can say is that you do.” - Alan Bates, British actor

Do you ever feel that you are being tested? Suddenly, you have several more challenges than usual to cope with. It doesn’t happen to me often, but this was the week.

It started on Tuesday when I slipped and fell full force onto my foot just before teaching my three group fitness classes. Recovering, I did teach. But, as the day continued my foot took on excruciating pain. I worried that I had broken a bone or bones. However, after spending more than four hours in the Emergency Room on Wednesday, I received the great news that it wasn’t broken.

There is more! Remember that misfortune often comes in threes.

Number two is that even though “I am never sick” my body has succumbed to the bronchitis that is prevalent this winter, so I am hacking and hacking – very unpleasant. And number three is that we have just experienced a huge snow storm – 18 inches total – and my car, which is parked outside, is buried.

I am not complaining. I decided to write this blog to not only help you with your “coping” but to also help me.

What do the experts have to say:

• “Humor can help you cope with the unbearable so that you can stay on the bright side of things until the bright side actually comes along.” - Allen Klein, American businessman
• “Problems are not the problem; coping is the problem.” - Virginia Satir, American psychologist
• “Culture is a way of coping with the world by defining it in detail.” - Malcolm Bradbury, English novelist
• “One of the things Mr. Kennedy taught me was that in laying out a new project, you shouldn't try to cope with every little problem.” - Sargent Shriver, American politician
• “I choose not to think of my life as surviving, but coping.” - Lorna Luft, American actress
• “One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There's always more than you can cope with.” - Marshall McLuhan, Canadian sociologist
• “Coping with the demands of everyday life would be exceedingly trying if one could arrive at solutions to problems only by actually performing possible options and suffering the consequences.” - Albert Bandura, Canadian psychologist

A couple more quotations that I found to be interesting:

“I was asked to act when I couldn't act. I was asked to sing 'Funny Face' when I couldn't sing, and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn't dance - and do all kinds of things I wasn't prepared for. Then I tried like mad to cope with it.” - Audrey Hepburn, American actress

“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.” - Stephen King, American author

So what are the challenges you have been coping with? I hope this blog has helped a bit. I know that it has helped me. Thank you!