Take Adversity Head On!

I. Take Adversity Head On!
“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin—real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.” Alfred D. Souza
A. Two categories of adversity: Inner Adversity and Outer Adversity
1. Inner Adversity: lack of confidence, lethargy, fear, anxiety, uncertainty, depression, self-loathing, physical pain, loneliness, self-doubt, fatigue, poor health, insomnia
2. Outer Adversity: Someone violates your trust, natural disasters, canceled flight, economic downturn, best friend moves away, your new car gets scratched, your computer crashes, your coworker gets upset with you, you fail a class, your insurance rates double, a loved one passes away unexpectedly, a noisy neighbor moves in next door
B. Definition: Adversity occurs when something negatively affects, or is predicted to negatively affect, someone or something you care about.
C. Scoring Your Adversity:
1. Impact: its real or imagined, existing or potential severity
2. Importance: how much it matters to you
D. Cloud Seeding: Creating adversity yourself in order to stimulate growth, change and development
E. Responding to Adversity (The Adversity Continuum)
“I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, his greatest fulfillment of all he holds dear, is the moment when he ahs worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle—victorious.” Vince Lombardi
1. Avoiding
a) It can buy you time, especially when you are overwhelmed, but more often it prevents you from taking on adversity and using it positively
b) Denial is one of the most frequent ways adversity is avoided
2. Surviving
a) Can be arduous and draining
b) Can be inspiring if it is a life or death situation, but more often it is not a heroic choice
3. Coping
a) Some coping strategies are constructive, such as venting to a friend, blowing off steam at the gym, or going for a walk
b) Many coping strategies are destructive, such as drinking, eating, complaining, blaming and playing political games
c) Coping may help you get through adversity unscathed but it does not enable you to take advantage of it to grow and excel
4. Managing
a) Managing adversity tries to minimize the downside of the problem and its potential impact on your life
b) This is more effective than the previous three, but it still takes a lot of energy and doesn’t give much back
5. Harnessing
a) Adversity has tremendous latent energy that can be harnessed to achieve incredible results and fuel your dreams
b) It creates big energy boosts and accelerates progress as well as builds momentum
c) It drives innovation, boosts confidence, strengthens morale
F. Adversity Assumptions (That Limit Your Potential)
1. Less adversity is better
2. My job is to shoulder adversity and protect my loved ones from it
3. Success can be gauged by how effectively you eliminate adversity from your life
G. The Adversity Inventory
1. Step One: Categorize Your Life
a) Family, friends, community, health, hobbies, etc.
2. Step Two: Declare Your Aspirations
a) List your top two or three aspirations for each category
3. Step Three: Prioritize Your Pain
a) List the top two or three adversities that are causing you the most pain in each category
4. Step Four: Pick Your Adversities
a) Pick the one adversity that, if you took it on, would release the greatest energy in your life
5. Step Five: Pinpoint Your Summit Challenge
a) The one compelling thing that you’ve always wanted to do, but have not yet done
6. Step Six: Select Your Summit Adversity
a) Select the one adversity that you are sure to face as you take on your summit challenge and that, if harnessed, would offer the greatest potential energy or breakthrough
7. Step Seven: Clear the Trail
a) What’s your excuse?
b) What are the primary reasons you have not optimized that adversity so far? Is it because the adversity makes you uncomfortable or requires extra effort, or because you just don’t know how?
c) What are the real excuses? What are the excuses beneath the excuses? What’s really at the heart of the matter:
8. Questions to Ask
a) If you were to turn into the storm with your Summit Adversity, how would you do it?
b) If you were to ask for or welcome the full force of the adversity, how would you do it?
c) What protections do you need to strip away to experience it fully and harness its force?
d) What courageous conversation do you need to have with yourself or others in order to bring it on and take it on?

From: The Adversity Advantage, Paul G. Stoltz and Erik Weihenmayer