Lance Armstrong, the well-known cyclist, was diagnosed with a bad form of cancer in 1996 when he was 25 years old. This diagnosis carried only a 3% survival rate, a grim outlook for the bicycle racing champion.
However, after beating cancer and returning to cycling and winning the 21-day-long Tour de France bike race several times, he had this interesting quote about the difficulty of bike racing vs. cancer.
“The one thing the illness has convinced me of beyond all doubt–more than any experience I’ve had as an athlete–is that we are much better than we know. We have unrealized capacities that sometimes only emerge in crisis. So if there is a purpose to the suffering that is cancer, I think it must be this: it’s meant to improve us.”
What would happen if we sought out how every crisis in our own life could improve us?