Hey I found a new term for thriving.  Posttraumatic Growth is a term coined by “psychologists Richard G. Tedeschi and Lawrence G. Calhoun at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in the mid-nineties.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_growth  I came across it in this article “How to Suffer Successfully: Post-Traumatic Growth and Nietzschean Resilience” http://wakeup-world.com/2015/12/07/how-to-suffer-successfully-post-traumatic-growth-and-nietzschean-resilience/

Most people do not consider suffering successful.  It is an introduction to the concept of thriving plus a plug to buy the book at the bottom of the article.  I added Out of the Darkness: From Turmoil To Transformation by Steve Taylor.  If anyone has read this book I would love to hear your reaction to it. 

I usually rate books by:

The book totally agrees with me

I learned something new

This book’s author is nuts

Throw it across the room…..yes, I actually threw a book across the room.  The author wrote that the type of life I used to live didn’t exist.  I was pissed.  Just because someone else doesn’t experience it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

The article indicated that with effort a person might gain positive attributes from a negative situation.  I also found in my own experience that in my own experience I learn more from my mistakes then when things go smoothly.  If all goes well I head off in a new direction.  However, if I have a problem I go looking for answers.  It is in the searching for purpose, meaning, and a better path that a person gains strength from an experience.  An example that I share is after cancer, my priorities shifted.  Things that I put off suddenly seemed far more important with the possibility of dying.  A week after I found out I had cancer the jets crashed into the two towers in New York, the Pentagon in Washington DC and a field in Pennsylvania.  I was praying and looking for answers.  That is when I became acquainted with the cacti in the desert that I share on the welcome page.

The article pointed out it is through spiritual understanding that people find answers to the age old question “Why?”  I went searching for answers.