I am well aware that when one asks a “How do I …?” question, it can be frustrating to get an answer whose premise is: Maybe you could try things a different way.
With that stated: My experience is that it might work more easily if, rather than having “adversity, determination, overcoming” in the $Text of a note, instead you create an attribute called something like $Qualities (or whatever), and have “adversity,” “determination”, etc by values that you enter in that space.
The long version of how this could be handy is in this thread from a couple of years ago, called “How to Use the Attribute Browser.” I have a functionality / goal similar to what I think you are trying to attain, and I have found the Attrib Browser to be 90% of the time the easiest and most elegant way to get there. Check it out! (Also, it means you don’t have to worry about issues of hierarchy and containers at all – unless you want to, to limit to scope of a query.)