The Enuma Elish: Creation Through Violence and the Word That Answers

The Babylonian Worldview and Scripture’s Response

The Enuma Elish stands as the most influential creation narrative of ancient Mesopotamia, articulating a worldview in which reality emerges from divine conflict, authority is secured through violence, and humanity exists to serve the needs of the gods. In this epic, cosmic order is achieved only after Marduk defeats the chaos goddess Tiamat, dismembers her corpse, and constructs the world from her remains. Creation is therefore morally ambiguous, the gods are contingent and competitive, and the cosmos remains inherently unstable, requiring continual ritual reinforcement. The text functions not merely as myth but as political theology, legitimating Babylon’s supremacy by projecting its imperial values onto the structure of reality itself.

Against this background, the opening chapters of Scripture offer a deliberate and sustained theological critique. Genesis 1–2 engages the same symbolic universe—primordial waters, cosmic ordering, temple imagery—but systematically reverses its logic. There is no theogony, no divine rivalry, and no chaos-combat. God creates by sovereign word, not by force, and the deep (תְּהוֹם) is stripped of all mythic agency. Rather than emerging from violence, the material world is repeatedly declared “good,” revealing a Creator whose authority is intrinsic and whose power is unthreatened. Humanity, far from being fashioned as slave labor from a defeated deity, is created in the image of God and entrusted with royal-priestly stewardship. In this way, Genesis does not borrow Babylonian myth so much as it dismantles it from within, offering a counter-creation theology that is implicitly apologetic against the claims of empire.

This polemical trajectory continues throughout the canon and reaches its climax in the New Testament, particularly in Johannine literature. Revelation reintroduces chaos imagery—the sea, the dragon, the beast—not to revive mythological combat but to complete its demythologization. The dragon is explicitly identified as Satan, not as a primordial creator or cosmic equal, and his defeat is secured not through violent conquest but through the faithful suffering of the Lamb who was slain. The final vision of new creation abolishes the sea altogether, signaling the permanent removal of all that threatens God’s good order. What Babylon asserted through ritual and myth—the fragility of order and the necessity of domination—the Bible decisively rejects, proclaiming instead a creation grounded in God’s word, sustained by covenant faithfulness, and consummated through redemption.

This contrast matters profoundly for both biblical interpretation and Christian life. It clarifies that Scripture’s creation theology is not naïve or culturally captive, but deeply self-conscious and apologetic, confronting rival worldviews at their most fundamental level. The Bible proclaims a God whose sovereignty does not depend on violence, a world that is inherently meaningful and good, and a humanity endowed with dignity and vocation. For believers, this grounds a way of life marked not by fear of chaos or appeasement of power, but by trust, stewardship, worship, and hope. The same God who spoke the world into being and defeated evil through the cross invites his people to live as image-bearers in confident anticipation of a renewed creation where chaos, suffering, and death are finally no more.

Understanding this theological battle helps us grasp why Genesis opens as it does—not with abstract philosophy, but with a counter-narrative that speaks directly into the Babylonian worldview. Where Enuma Elish presents creation as emerging from the butchered corpse of a chaos goddess, Genesis proclaims creation by divine word. Where Babylon requires humanity to serve as divine slaves maintaining cosmic order through endless ritual, Scripture declares that humans bear God’s image and are called to royal stewardship. The contrast extends to every level: authority secured through violence versus authority flowing from eternal being; matter formed from evil versus matter declared good; humanity as expendable labor versus humanity as dignified image-bearers; cosmic instability requiring ritual maintenance versus covenant faithfulness guaranteeing creation’s stability.

The Story of Enuma Elish: Seven Tablets of Cosmic Conflict

The Enuma Elish (“When on high…”) is the Babylonian creation epic, probably standardized in its extant form in the late second millennium BC. It narrates the origin of the gods, the rise of conflict among them, and the eventual elevation of Marduk as king of the divine assembly after his defeat of the chaos goddess Tiamat. Creation emerges not through peaceful ordering but through violent cosmic conflict, culminating in humanity’s creation to serve the gods. The text functions simultaneously as cosmology, political theology, and liturgical propaganda legitimating Babylon’s supremacy, likely performed during the Akītu (New Year) festival to ritually reenact Marduk’s triumph and renew cosmic stability.

Tablet I introduces the primordial state where only Apsu (fresh water) and Tiamat (salt water) exist. Younger gods are born from their union, but their noise disturbs Apsu’s rest. When Apsu plots to destroy them to restore silence, Ea (Enki), the god of wisdom and magic, kills him through cunning. Tiamat initially resists violence but is eventually provoked to war by the other gods’ manipulation and her own desire for vengeance.

Tablet II describes Tiamat’s war preparations. She creates monstrous hybrid beings—dragons and serpents—to serve as her army. She appoints Kingu as her champion and general, giving him the Tablet of Destinies, which grants cosmic authority. The gods panic at this threat and desperately seek a deliverer who can face the chaos goddess and her terrifying forces.

Tablet III presents the rise of Marduk, Ea’s son and the storm god who will become Babylon’s national deity. Marduk offers to fight Tiamat, but he demands supreme kingship over all the gods as his reward. The divine assembly agrees to his terms and formally confers authority upon him, making his cosmic victory inseparable from his political elevation.

Tablet IV narrates the theological climax: the battle with Tiamat. Marduk confronts the chaos goddess armed with storm winds, net, and weapons. He defeats and kills her in single combat, a victory that establishes both cosmic order and his own supremacy. This moment—creation through violence—defines the entire Babylonian worldview.

Tablet V shows creation from Tiamat’s corpse. Marduk splits her body like a shellfish, using half to form the heavens and half to create the earth. He establishes cosmic order by setting the paths of stars, creating the calendar, and assigning celestial duties. The universe is architecturally designed from the remains of chaos, meaning matter itself carries the moral ambiguity of its violent origin.

Tablet VI describes the creation of humanity. Kingu is executed for his role in the rebellion, and humans are fashioned from his blood—the blood of a defeated, evil god. Humanity exists exclusively to bear the gods’ labor and maintain their temples, freeing the divine beings from work. There is no intrinsic dignity or worth; human purpose is purely cultic utility and servitude.

Tablet VII concludes with the exaltation of Marduk. He receives fifty divine names, each celebrating different aspects of his power and authority. Babylon and its great temple Esagila are established as cosmic centers, the earthly reflections of divine order. The gods eternally praise Marduk’s kingship, and the text ends not with humanity’s blessing but with divine self-congratulation.

Characters, Themes, and Theological Implications

The main characters embody the epic’s theological vision. Apsu, the male personification of fresh water and primordial order, seeks to destroy the younger gods to restore silence and stability, representing conservative divine forces resistant to change. Tiamat, the salt-water chaos goddess and mother of the gods, begins as a passive figure but becomes the embodiment of cosmic disorder and violent opposition when provoked. Ea (Enki), god of wisdom and magic, defeats Apsu through cunning rather than force and fathers Marduk, representing intellectual power within the divine hierarchy. Marduk, the storm god and Babylon’s patron deity, becomes king of the gods by defeating Tiamat and establishing cosmic order, his victory legitimating Babylonian imperial ideology. Kingu, Tiamat’s chosen consort and general, holds the Tablet of Destinies temporarily, and his execution provides the material—rebellious divine blood—from which humanity is created. The younger gods collectively represent dynamic, generative divine forces whose noise and activity drive the narrative conflict, showing how even divine society operates through tension and competition.

The major themes reveal a comprehensive worldview fundamentally opposed to biblical theology. Chaoskampf (chaos-combat) stands at the center: creation emerges from divine warfare, not peaceful ordering, with order imposed through violence and chaos personified as a hostile deity who must be destroyed. Kingship and political theology permeate the narrative, as Marduk’s cosmic authority mirrors Babylon’s imperial ideology, establishing that divine kingship legitimates human political dominance. Creation as dissection presents the cosmos formed from the body of a slain enemy, emphasizing domination rather than harmony and rendering matter itself morally ambivalent since it originates from violence. The servile role of humanity defines human existence: people are created to relieve the gods of labor, possessing no intrinsic dignity, with purpose reduced to cultic utility. Divine power through force and fear establishes that authority is secured through conquest, with moral order flowing from victory rather than character. Finally, the liturgical and cultic function shows how the epic operated within the Akītu festival, ritually reenacting Marduk’s triumph to renew cosmic stability annually, since order remains perpetually fragile and requires constant ritual maintenance.

These themes create a worldview of inherent instability and violence. If creation emerges from chaos-combat, then chaos can always return. If divine authority depends on victory, then power can be lost. If humanity exists only to serve, then human life has no inherent worth. If matter originates from a slain deity, then the physical world carries moral corruption. The Enuma Elish presents a cosmos that is fundamentally unstable, perpetually threatened, and maintained only through ritual, sacrifice, and the ongoing dominance of the strong over the weak. This is not merely ancient mythology—it is a complete theological system that justifies empire, validates violence, and reduces humanity to instrumental value.

From Babylon to Revelation: The Biblical Trajectory

The Bible’s response to this worldview unfolds across the entire canon, from Genesis through Revelation, in a sustained theological critique that uses similar imagery while systematically reversing its meaning. Genesis opens with deliberate counter-narrative: where Enuma Elish begins with divine conflict, Genesis declares “In the beginning, God”—no theogony, no struggle for power, no negotiation of authority. Where Tiamat represents personal, hostile chaos that must be slain, the תְּהוֹם (tehom, deep) in Genesis remains impersonal and unthreatening, with God’s Spirit simply hovering over the waters. Creation unfolds through divine speech—“And God said”—not combat. There is no resistance, no rival, no enemy to overcome. Chaos is not defeated; it is simply commanded into order.

This pattern continues throughout the Hebrew Bible. Poetic texts like Psalm 74 and Isaiah 27 use chaos-combat imagery, but always metaphorically rather than mythologically. When the Psalmist declares that God “crushed the heads of Leviathan,” this evokes Exodus deliverance, not cosmogonic violence. Leviathan appears in Job and Psalms as a creature of God, even one created “to play” in the sea (Psalm 104:26). The imagery is appropriated but emptied of polytheistic ontology. Chaos never rivals God—it remains his creation, under his sovereign control. Isaiah’s prophecy that God “will punish Leviathan” (27:1) shifts chaos imagery entirely into eschatology, making it about final judgment rather than cosmic origins.

Revelation completes this trajectory by using Babylonian imagery to announce Babylon’s final defeat. The dragon appears in Revelation 12, but John immediately identifies it: “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan.” This explicit identification collapses three biblical trajectories into one figure—the Edenic deceiver, chaos imagery, and moral opposition—but crucially, the dragon is neither primordial nor eternal. He is a creature, thrown down from heaven (12:9), bound for a time (20:2), and ultimately destroyed (20:10). Where Marduk defeats Tiamat through violent combat to establish his kingship, the Lamb conquers through being slain, securing victory before any eschatological battle occurs (Revelation 5). Authority flows not from violence but from faithful suffering and obedience.

The final vision abolishes chaos imagery altogether: “the sea was no more” (Revelation 21:1). This is not geography but theology—the permanent removal of all that threatens God’s good order. Where Enuma Elish presents endless cycles of ritual maintaining fragile stability, Revelation announces creation’s complete security. No temple is needed because God dwells directly with humanity (21:22). No sun or moon is required because God himself is the light (21:23). The cosmos no longer requires maintenance, defense, or ritual reinforcement. What Babylon achieved temporarily through violence, God accomplishes eternally through covenant. Genesis denies chaos a beginning as God’s rival; Revelation denies chaos a future. Together they dismantle Babylonian creation theology from both ends of Scripture, revealing a God whose sovereignty never depended on violence and a creation that was always secure in his word.

Living in Light of the True Creation

Understanding the Enuma Elish and Scripture’s response to it transforms how we love Christ and live as his people today. We recognize that our faith rests not on mythology but on truth—that the Bible deliberately confronted the dominant worldview of the ancient Near East and proclaimed a radically different reality. Where Babylon taught that might makes right, that humanity exists to serve power, and that the world emerged from violence and remains forever unstable, Scripture announces good news: a God who creates by word rather than weapon, who forms humanity in his own image rather than from defeated enemies, who establishes covenant rather than demanding appeasement, and who secures creation through faithfulness rather than force. This is not naïve religious sentiment but sophisticated theological warfare against empire and its claims.

For believers, this grounds our entire way of life. We do not live in fear that chaos might return or that cosmic order depends on our ritual performance. We do not view the material world as morally corrupted or humanity as inherently worthless. We do not believe that authority flows from violence or that divine power requires domination. Instead, we trust the God who spoke light into darkness, who rested on the seventh day inviting us to share his peace, who became incarnate in Jesus Christ to defeat evil not through overwhelming force but through self-giving love. The cross reveals the character of God more clearly than Marduk’s battle with Tiamat ever could—here is power perfected in weakness, victory accomplished through suffering, and kingship established through service. We worship a Lamb who was slain, not a warrior who slaughtered chaos. And we live in confident hope that the new creation he secured will never fade, never fail, and never require our anxious maintenance, because it rests on the unshakeable word of the God who called it into being and declared it very good. This is the foundation of Christian joy, the ground of our mission, and the source of our courage to live as image-bearers in a world still struggling against the old Babylonian lies about power, worth, and the nature of reality itself.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The Epic of Gilgamesh: Ancient Wisdom and Biblical Reflection

The Epic of Gilgamesh speaks to enduring human concerns that transcend its ancient Mesopotamian origins. First, it recognizes that unrestrained masculine power corrodes both individual and community, showing how Gilgamesh’s tyranny in Uruk is only tempered through his friendship with Enkidu. Their relationship demonstrates that strength requires accountability—iron sharpens iron, as the proverb says. A man needs someone who challenges and balances him, holds him accountable, and helps reign in destructive impulses. Yet where the epic rightly perceives this need for relational formation, it lacks the biblical grounding that subordinates all human relationships to obedience before God, preventing moral horizons from collapsing into mere peer regulation.

Second, Gilgamesh confronts the universal human terror of mortality with haunting honesty. After Enkidu’s death, Gilgamesh’s visceral grief and existential panic drive his desperate quest for immortality. His final resolution—finding meaning through legacy and the enduring walls of Uruk—reflects a deeply human but ultimately tragic accommodation to death. The epic honestly names our anxiety but can only offer symbolic endurance through memory and achievement. Scripture affirms this fear while rejecting the proposed solution, reorienting the desire for immortality away from human accomplishment toward divine promise. Where Gilgamesh settles for being remembered, the biblical narrative insists that death itself will be defeated through resurrection grounded in covenant faithfulness.

Third and fourth, the epic’s creation and flood narratives seem to point toward shared ancient memories while revealing radically different theological conclusions. In Gilgamesh’s worldview, humans exist merely to serve divine needs, created through violence to relieve the gods’ burdens. The flood results from divine irritation at human noise rather than moral judgment, with gods panicking during the deluge and swarming “like flies” around post-flood sacrifices in their hunger. Genesis deliberately engages this cultural memory to correct it, presenting creation as the intentional act of a morally coherent Creator who speaks order into existence, and framing the flood as ethical judgment followed by covenantal restraint that secures creation’s future. The Bible doesn’t deny these ancient memories; it reinterprets their meaning.

Fifth, the epic recognizes the civilizing effect of women upon men through Shamhat’s transformation of Enkidu from wild man to cultured being. After their sexual union, Enkidu loses his connection with animals and gains speech, clothing, and purpose—but the epic frames this as a tragic exchange, power for awareness, innocence for suffering. Scripture affirms the formative role of intimate relationships but rejects the notion that civilization represents loss of authentic humanity. In Genesis, woman is not a civilizing instrument but a covenantal partner, equally bearing God’s image. Where Gilgamesh presents human formation as alienation from nature, the Bible portrays it as vocation: ordered life in communion with God, others, and creation under divine command.

The Story and Its World

The Epic of Gilgamesh follows a circular journey that begins and ends at the walls of Uruk, tracing the transformation of a restless tyrant into a wise, mortal king. Gilgamesh, described as two-thirds divine and one-third human, initially oppresses his people through violence and sexual predation, lacking limits precisely because he has no equal. The gods create Enkidu from clay to serve as his counterbalance—a wild man living among animals who becomes civilized through the temple prostitute Shamhat. After Enkidu challenges Gilgamesh to a wrestling match that ends in stalemate, the two become inseparable friends, and Gilgamesh becomes less tyrannical as he gains a companion who can hold him accountable.

Seeking eternal fame, the pair journey to the Cedar Forest to slay its divine guardian Humbaba, despite the monster’s pleas for mercy. Upon their return, the goddess Ishtar proposes marriage to Gilgamesh, but he rejects her by recounting the misfortunes of her previous lovers. Enraged, she sends the Bull of Heaven to destroy Uruk. Though Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the beast, the gods decree that one must die for their hubris. Enkidu falls ill and dies, leaving Gilgamesh shattered by grief and sudden awareness of his own mortality. This turning point transforms the epic from adventure story into existential meditation.

Driven by terror of death, Gilgamesh abandons his kingdom to find Ut-napishtim, the only mortal granted eternal life after surviving the Great Flood by building a massive boat. Gilgamesh traverses the dark path of the sun through Mount Mashu and crosses the lethal Waters of Death with help from the ferryman Urshanabi. Along the way, the barmaid Siduri advises him to abandon his quest and find joy in life’s simple pleasures: good food, clean clothes, and family. Reaching Dilmun, Gilgamesh hears the flood story but fails Ut-napishtim’s test of staying awake for six days and nights, proving himself unfit for immortality. Given a consolation prize—a plant that restores youth—Gilgamesh loses even this when a snake steals it while he bathes. Returning to Uruk empty-handed, he finally finds wisdom in surveying his city’s enduring walls, understanding that while individuals cannot live forever, the works of civilization and the memory of a just king provide the only true immortality.

The epic’s themes resonate across millennia because they address fundamental human experiences. The necessity of companionship runs throughout, suggesting that human potential and restraint are only fully realized in relation to others. The bond between Gilgamesh and Enkidu serves as the emotional core, showing how friendship transforms destructive power into heroic purpose. Nature versus civilization appears in Enkidu’s journey from the steppe to Uruk, portraying civilization as beautiful but irreversibly costly—once civilized, the animals flee from him. The hubris of heroes emerges in their overstepping bounds by killing Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven, exploring how great deeds bring divine punishment alongside fame. Finally, wisdom through suffering pervades the narrative: Gilgamesh begins as strong but foolish, ending as weary but wise, having learned that true understanding comes only through loss and the failure of one’s deepest desires.

Biblical Connections and Theological Contrasts

The relationship between Gilgamesh and Scripture reveals both shared ancient cultural memory and decisive theological divergence. The parallels are striking: both traditions preserve flood narratives featuring divine judgment, a chosen survivor, a great boat preserving life, receding waters, post-flood sacrifice, and blessing afterward. These similarities demonstrate that Genesis participates in the same ancient Near Eastern conversation rather than existing in isolation. Both texts also grapple with creation origins, the meaning of mortality, and humanity’s place in the cosmic order. Yet Genesis never names Gilgamesh or openly polemicizes against Mesopotamian traditions; instead, it quietly re-narrates reality, offering the same memories with radically different theological implications.

The decisive differences reveal Genesis functioning as narrative apologetic rather than mere myth-borrowing. In Gilgamesh, the gods are morally inconsistent—flooding the earth because human noise disturbs their sleep, panicking during the deluge, and afterward clustering “like flies” around sacrifices because they’re hungry. Genesis presents YHWH as a sovereign, morally coherent God who judges violence rather than noise, never panics, and needs no sustenance from offerings. Where Gilgamesh portrays humans as expendable servants created to relieve divine burdens, Genesis insists that humans bear God’s image and possess inherent dignity and moral agency. Utnapishtim’s salvation is arbitrary—secretly arranged by one god against the divine council—while Noah is saved because he “found favor” through righteousness and obedience. Most significantly, Gilgamesh offers no lasting stability; the gods could flood again, and humanity remains vulnerable. Genesis concludes with God binding himself through covenant, guaranteeing creation’s stability through the rainbow sign and promising never to flood the earth again.

These theological contrasts extend throughout both works’ symbolic worlds. The post-flood sacrifices illustrate the difference perfectly: when Utnapishtim offers burnt offerings, the hungry gods swarm to satisfy their appetites, revealing divine dependence and transactional worship. When Noah builds an altar, YHWH’s “pleasing aroma” leads not to divine feeding but to moral reflection and self-binding covenant commitment. Even the bird-sending episodes carry theological weight: Gilgamesh’s raven succeeds because it can scavenge among death, signaling mere survival, while Genesis demotes the raven and elevates the dove, whose olive leaf indicates not just dry land but renewed life and long-term cultivation. Where Gilgamesh frames immortality as an impossible prize that even the greatest hero cannot win, leaving only tragic accommodation to death through memory and achievement, Scripture transforms the conversation entirely—presenting death not as natural endpoint but as intruder, and pointing toward resurrection hope grounded in divine promise rather than human striving. The epic concludes with Gilgamesh accepting mortality before Uruk’s enduring walls; the biblical narrative culminates in empty tomb and new creation, where death itself is defeated and God’s faithfulness, not human fame, sustains eternal hope.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Reading the Pyramid Texts: Ancient Egypt and the Biblical Vision

When I decided to reread the ancient texts of the Western tradition, I knew I would encounter ideas that would challenge and illuminate my understanding of history, philosophy, and religion. The Pyramid Texts of Unas, carved into stone around 2375 BCE in the burial chamber of Egypt’s last Fifth Dynasty pharaoh, represent humanity’s earliest substantial religious literature. My motivation for engaging these texts was threefold: to deepen my grasp of Western civilization’s intellectual foundations, to understand the ancient Near Eastern context from which the Bible emerged, and to gain insights into my own spiritual journey as it intersects with God’s grand narrative unfolding through history. Reading these texts is not merely an academic exercise but a way of seeing how my faith stands in continuity with and distinction from the religious imagination of the ancient world.

The Pyramid Texts revealed several striking realities about ancient Egyptian religion that illuminate the revolutionary nature of biblical faith. Most prominently, these texts reflect a profoundly elitist view of the afterlife. Salvation, immortality, and communion with the divine were exclusive privileges of the pharaoh. The elaborate rituals, spells, and offerings inscribed on pyramid walls served one purpose: to transform the deceased king into a divine being who would ascend to the heavens, join the sun god Re in his daily journey, become one with Osiris in vindication, and take his place among the imperishable stars. Common people had no such hope. The texts make clear that Unas judges but is not judged, commands the living and the dead, and even consumes the power of lesser gods in the shocking “Cannibal Hymn.” This exclusivity reveals a worldview where cosmic order depended entirely on the king’s successful transition to divinity. In contrast, Genesis and the broader biblical narrative present a radically different vision. All humanity bears the divine image, not just kings. God’s covenant extends to an entire people, eventually encompassing all nations. The democratization of salvation that seems merely political in Egyptian religion’s later development becomes foundational to biblical theology from the start. This contrast helped me appreciate how Scripture dignifies every human person as created in God’s image and called into relationship with the Creator, regardless of social status or power.
 
The Pyramid Texts also illuminated how Genesis functions as subtle but deliberate theological opposition to Egyptian polytheism. The creation accounts in Genesis share some ancient Near Eastern imagery with Egyptian texts—primordial waters, the separation of heaven and earth, the emergence of dry land—but transform these elements completely. Where Atum emerges from the eternal chaotic waters of Nun and creates through bodily emanation, spitting out Shu and Tefnut, Genesis presents God as already existing before any chaos, creating by sovereign word rather than bodily effort. The deep in Genesis 1:2 is not a divine being but passive matter subject to God’s command. Where Egyptian cosmology envisions Shu physically holding apart the sky goddess Nut and earth god Geb in perpetual strain, Genesis depicts separations accomplished once by divine decree and declared stable and good. Egyptian religion sees creation as fragile, requiring constant ritual maintenance by the divine king to prevent cosmic collapse back into chaos. The biblical vision presents creation as secure, sustained by God’s faithful word rather than human ritual. This stability underwrites the possibility of linear history, covenant relationship, and moral purpose—concepts largely foreign to Egyptian cyclical thinking. The Sabbath rest concluding Genesis 1 would be unthinkable in Egyptian theology, where rest would signal cosmic failure rather than fulfillment. Understanding these contrasts helped me see Genesis not as primitive cosmology but as sophisticated theological resistance literature, deliberately reconfiguring ancient Near Eastern imagery to proclaim a radically different view of God, creation, and humanity’s place in the cosmos.
 
Most profoundly, the Pyramid Texts helped me recognize how the Bible places humanity in proper relation to God and offers a more compelling vision of relationship with the Creator. Egyptian religion, as expressed in these texts, operates through magical formulas and ritual knowledge. Knowing divine names, speaking correct incantations, and performing proper ceremonies grants power over cosmic forces. The emphasis falls on technique, manipulation, and the king’s ability to dominate even the gods themselves. Biblical faith inverts this entirely. Rather than humanity commanding God through magical speech, God speaks first, creating the world and calling humanity into covenant. Rather than salvation through esoteric knowledge available only to elites, Scripture emphasizes trust, obedience, and relationship available to all. The prophets consistently critique the mechanical view of ritual that reduces religion to technique, insisting instead on justice, mercy, and humble walking with God. Where Unas ascends by consuming divine power and dominating the spiritual realm, biblical heroes from Abraham to David are “friends of God” who wrestle with, argue with, and ultimately submit to the divine will. The culmination comes in Christ, who achieves kingship not through domination but through self-giving death, reversing every assumption of the Pyramid Texts about how divine power operates. This contrast illuminated for me why grace is so central to Christian faith. We do not manipulate God through ritual expertise or climb to divinity through our own power. Instead, God descends to us, initiates covenant, and offers relationship based entirely on divine mercy. Every person, created in God’s image, can enter this relationship—not through magical knowledge but through faithful response to divine grace.
 
The Pyramid Texts of Unas are structured according to the architectural progression through the pyramid’s interior chambers, creating a spatial theology that maps the king’s journey from death to divine transformation. The entrance corridor contains protective spells against serpents and chaos. The antechamber focuses on the king’s ritual transformation, identifying Unas with Horus, with the lotus-born god Nefertum, and with a star emerging from primordial waters. The sarcophagus chamber divides into distinct walls with specific theological emphases. The north wall contains extensive offering liturgies, the opening of the mouth ritual, and sustenance theology centering on bread, beer, and the Eye of Horus. The east wall presents ascension texts and solar theology as Unas rises with Re’s morning barque. The south wall proclaims Osirian vindication with repeated refrains that “Unas is not dead” and asserts his judicial authority. The west wall contains aggressive protective spells and cosmic domination motifs. The movement from chamber to chamber enacts a progression from corpse to god to cosmic ruler to eternal star.
 
The underlying theology operates on several fundamental principles that reveal a coherent if polytheistic worldview. Egyptian cosmology structures reality around the tension between maat and isfet, order and chaos. Death represents ontological vulnerability, a moment when the king risks regression into primordial chaos. The elaborate rituals and spells serve to defend against this collapse and secure the king’s transformation. Divine kingship stands at the center of this theology. Unas is simultaneously presented as son of Atum, Horus incarnate, Osiris vindicated, and companion of Re. Kingship functions as cosmic mediation, ensuring order persists in heaven and earth. The anthropology underlying the texts envisions human identity as multiple and complex, consisting of body, ka (vital essence), ba (mobile personality), name, and shadow. Salvation means the integration and preservation of all these components. The afterlife itself appears not as a single destination but as overlapping possibilities freely combined without apparent tension: stellar immortality among the imperishable stars, solar rebirth in daily rising with Re, and Osirian vindication through judicial triumph.
 
The major divine figures form an intricate pantheon with specific roles in the king’s resurrection. Atum functions as the self-generated creator who emerges from Nun, the primordial waters representing pre-creation chaos and unordered potential. Atum creates through bodily emission, whether spittle or seed, establishing himself as the prototype of self-existent deity. Re appears as the solar ruler whose daily journey represents victory over darkness and whose kingship manifests through movement and light. Osiris serves as the prototype of death and vindication, a judge figure whom Unas paradoxically transcends even while identifying with him. Horus functions as heir and warrior, with the restoration of his eye symbolizing wholeness and power. Seth plays an ambivalent role as both chaos agent and protector, harnessed rather than eliminated from the cosmic order. Nut, the sky goddess, serves as cosmic womb who swallows the sun nightly and births both gods and the king. The texts also reference the Great and Lesser Enneads, divine councils of nine deities each who witness, assist, and judge the pharaoh’s resurrection, integrating Heliopolitan solar theology with Osirian resurrection traditions.
 
The creation theology embedded in the Pyramid Texts appears not as systematic narrative but as presupposed cosmic grammar underlying the ritual language. Several key features characterize this creation vision. First, creation emerges from watery chaos as land rises from Nun, often depicted through lotus imagery. Unas himself is described as “conceived in the watery abyss,” identifying his rebirth with primordial emergence. Second, creation operates through differentiation rather than absolute origination—separating dry from moist, lifting sky from earth, imposing order rather than creating ex nihilo. The creator god does not stand outside the process but emerges from within it. Third, creation is ongoing rather than completed, reenacted daily through solar rebirth and requiring constant ritual maintenance. The king’s successful transformation actually stabilizes creation itself. Fourth, human participation becomes essential to creation’s continuation. The king does not merely receive created order but reenters creation as its co-maintainer. This makes creation fragile, cyclical, and ritualized rather than stable, linear, and complete.
 
These creation elements illuminate biblical theology through both parallel and contrast. The primordial waters appear in both traditions—Nun in Egyptian texts and tehom in Genesis 1:2. The Hebrew word may share linguistic roots with Tiamat from Mesopotamian mythology and conceptually parallels Nun as the pre-creation deep. However, Genesis decisively strips these waters of mythic agency. The deep in Genesis has no personality, generates nothing, and offers no resistance. God already exists before the chaos rather than emerging from it. This represents not stylistic preference but theological polemic against the Egyptian view of co-eternal chaos. Similarly, while both traditions emphasize separation of waters above and below, the mechanism differs radically. Shu physically holds apart Nut and Geb in perpetual strain in Egyptian mythology, while Genesis depicts separation accomplished once by divine word with no ongoing divine effort required. The biblical cosmos is declared stable and good, secure rather than fragile, needing no ritual maintenance to prevent collapse.
 
The mode of creation reveals perhaps the starkest contrast. Atum creates through bodily emanation—spitting, seed, discharge—in a process that is biological and mythic, embedding the creator within the material process itself. Genesis presents creation by speech, requiring no bodily effort and employing no sexual or biological imagery. This verbal creation establishes God’s transcendence and sovereignty in opposition to Egyptian corporeality. Later Egyptian developments like the Memphite Theology would emphasize creation by divine speech through Ptah, perhaps showing internal Egyptian movement toward more abstract theology, but the Pyramid Texts primarily reflect the older Heliopolitan tradition of physical emanation. Genesis rejects not merely the details but the entire category of divine corporeality as creation’s mode.
 
The treatment of time further distinguishes these traditions. Egyptian cosmology envisions eternity as endless repetition. Creation is reenacted daily through solar rebirth and Osirian vindication. Salvation means perpetual maintenance of order against ever-threatening chaos. Biblical creation unfolds through numbered days toward a goal, culminating in Sabbath rest. Time has direction and purpose rather than mere cycling. This linear temporality makes possible the biblical concepts of covenant history, prophetic fulfillment, and eschatological hope—all foreign to Egyptian cyclical thinking. The Sabbath itself represents theological revolution. Where Egyptian religion requires constant ritual labor to maintain cosmic order, biblical faith proclaims that God’s creative work is complete, stable, and good, needing only human rest and worship rather than anxious magical maintenance.
 
The anthropology embedded in these creation visions produces radically different views of human dignity and destiny. The Pyramid Texts reserve divine transformation exclusively for the king. Only Unas ascends to heaven, becomes divine, judges gods, and achieves immortality. Non-royal humans barely appear except as servants or offerings. The king alone mediates cosmic order, making his successful transformation essential for the universe’s continued existence. Genesis democratizes what Egypt restricts, declaring all humans created in God’s image with dominion delegated universally. Authority becomes vocational rather than ontological—humans serve as God’s representatives without becoming divine themselves. This explains why Genesis and much of the Hebrew Bible consist of non-royal literature, a quiet but radical literary and theological move. Kings in biblical tradition stand under divine law rather than embodying it. Prophets may rebuke kings without threatening cosmic order. Creation does not depend on royal ritual but on God’s faithful sustaining word.
 
The different treatments of death and creation reveal fundamentally incompatible worldviews. Egyptian theology makes creation serve afterlife assurance. The ritual texts function to reverse death’s threat of disintegration back into chaos. Resurrection operates mythically and ritually, requiring elaborate magical procedures to reintegrate the king’s multiple soul-components. Genesis presents creation as originally death-free, with death entering only through moral failure and covenant rupture in Genesis 3. Death becomes consequence rather than cosmic necessity. This relocates the problem from the metaphysical to the moral realm, making redemption ultimately about restored relationship with God rather than magical reanimation. These contrasts illuminated for me why the New Testament presents resurrection so differently from Egyptian religion. Where Unas achieves immortality through consuming divine power and dominating the spiritual realm, Christ conquers death through self-giving love. Where Egyptian afterlife requires elite access to secret knowledge and expensive ritual, Christian resurrection is freely offered to all through grace. Where Egyptian texts envision endless cyclical reenactment, New Testament hope looks toward historical fulfillment and bodily resurrection as once-for-all events transforming creation itself.
 
The relationship between kingship and cosmic order reveals perhaps the deepest theological divide between these traditions. Egyptian theology makes the king essential to creation’s maintenance. Without successful royal transformation and ongoing ritual, cosmic order collapses back into chaos. The king does not merely rule earth but participates in sustaining the universe’s basic structure. Biblical theology liberates creation from dependence on human ritual. God alone sustains the cosmos by his word. Kings serve at God’s pleasure and under his law. When Israel demands a king in 1 Samuel 8, the text presents this as problematic compromise rather than cosmic necessity. Prophetic literature freely critiques kings for injustice without fear of universal collapse. This difference explains much about the contrasting development of political theology in Egyptian and biblical traditions. Egypt required divine kingship as cosmic principle. Israel accommodated human kingship while maintaining God’s sole sovereignty. This theological move made possible later developments like the separation of religious and political authority in Western thought.
 
Reading the Pyramid Texts also illuminated biblical polemic I had previously misunderstood. Passages like Exodus 12:12, “Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments,” take on deeper meaning when one grasps the elaborate divine bureaucracy governing Egyptian cosmos. Psalm 115’s mockery of idols that “have mouths but speak not” contrasts directly with Egyptian practice where divine images were ritually “animated” and considered genuinely effective. Isaiah 31:3, “The Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses are flesh, and not spirit,” directly rejects the fluid boundary between human and divine so prominent in the Pyramid Texts. These are not naive dismissals but sophisticated theological rejoinders to specific Egyptian claims. The biblical authors knew Egyptian religion intimately and crafted careful responses emphasizing God’s transcendence, creation’s independence from human ritual, and the distinction between Creator and creature.
 
The Egyptian ritual system also illuminated aspects of biblical worship I had not previously appreciated. The elaborate offering liturgies on the north wall of Unas’s chamber, invoking bread, beer, the Eye of Horus, and other ritual elements hundreds of times, show the ancient Near Eastern context for Levitical sacrificial prescriptions. Both traditions emphasize daily temple service and priestly mediation between divine and human realms. However, biblical texts increasingly emphasize moral and ethical dimensions over magical efficacy. The prophets consistently critique treating sacrifice as mechanical technique rather than expression of covenant faithfulness. Where Egyptian religion seeks to manipulate divine forces through correct ritual, biblical faith emphasizes obedient relationship and trust. This distinction becomes crucial for understanding Jesus’ critique of first-century temple practice and the early church’s development of non-sacrificial worship after 70 AD.
 
The treatment of serpent symbolism in both traditions proves particularly illuminating. The Pyramid Texts contain numerous protective spells against serpents representing chaos and danger. Serpents can be enemies requiring magical subjugation or protective deities like the uraeus guarding the king. Egyptian serpent symbolism is complex and ambivalent but contains no inherent moral dimension. Genesis 3’s serpent as deceiver introduces moral corruption into the symbolism, making the serpent not merely dangerous but actively opposed to divine purpose and human flourishing. Numbers 21’s bronze serpent retains the apotropaic protective function similar to Egyptian usage, but later biblical tradition recognizes even this as potentially idolatrous, with 2 Kings 18:4 reporting its destruction. Apocalyptic literature in Revelation draws on ancient Near Eastern chaos-serpent mythology while transforming it morally, making the dragon represent evil itself rather than mere cosmic disorder. Reading the Pyramid Texts helped me see how the biblical authors appropriated and transformed widespread ancient symbolism to express their distinctive theological vision.
 
Perhaps most significantly for my own spiritual journey, engaging these texts clarified what Christian faith affirms and denies about the relationship between religion and power. Egyptian religion served to legitimate and maintain royal authority. The king’s afterlife guaranteed cosmic stability. Divine power flowed through the proper hierarchy. Ritual expertise secured salvation for the elite while offering nothing to common people. Christianity inverts every element of this system. God comes in weakness, not power. The king who conquers through self-giving death rather than domination. Salvation is offered freely to all rather than sold to elites. The church at its best critiques rather than legitimates political power. When Christianity has functioned most like Egyptian religion—blessing imperial power, offering salvation through ritual technique controlled by clerical elites, marginalizing the poor—it has betrayed its own founding vision. The Pyramid Texts thus serve as cautionary tale, showing what biblical faith deliberately rejected and what the church must continually resist.
 
Reading these ancient texts has not weakened my faith but deepened it by showing the radical nature of biblical claims within their ancient context. Genesis is not primitive mythology but sophisticated theology deliberately reconfiguring Egyptian and Mesopotamian cosmic imagery. The exodus is not just tribal legend but theological declaration of liberation from a system where only god-kings mattered. The prophetic critique of injustice is not just ethical teaching but rejection of religion’s use to maintain elite privilege. Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom is not just spiritual metaphor but announcement that God’s reign operates through completely different principles than earthly kingdoms—whether Egyptian, Roman, or any other imperial system. The early church’s table fellowship across social boundaries is not just moral idealism but embodiment of creation’s true order where all bear the divine image and are called into covenant relationship.
 
My own spiritual journey is shaped by this grand narrative that begins not with easy answers but with careful wrestling with the religious visions that dominated the ancient world. I am not called to escape history into pure spirituality but to discern where God has been at work through history, often in surprising opposition to humanity’s most impressive religious achievements. The Pyramid Texts represent enormous human effort, artistic brilliance, theological sophistication, and genuine religious yearning. Yet biblical faith says this is not enough, not because human effort is worthless but because it cannot bridge the gap between creature and Creator. That bridge must be built from the divine side through grace, offered freely rather than earned through ritual expertise or royal privilege. Reading these texts has helped me appreciate anew that my standing before God depends not on my own religious sophistication or moral achievement but entirely on divine mercy extended to all who respond in faith. This is not the conclusion ancient Egyptian religion could reach despite its brilliance. It required revelation, the slow pedagogy of Scripture, and ultimately the incarnation to make this clear.
 
The Pyramid Texts stand as powerful testimony to humanity’s religious capacity and yearning for immortality. They also reveal the limitations of religion constructed around human power and elite privilege. Biblical faith emerges from this ancient Near Eastern context not by ignoring or dismissing Egyptian achievements but by fundamentally reorienting the relationship between God and humanity. Where Egypt said salvation flows from below through human ritual ascending to the divine, Scripture says salvation flows from above through divine grace descending to humanity. Where Egypt said only the powerful matter, Scripture says the image of God dignifies every person. Where Egypt said creation is fragile and requires constant human maintenance, Scripture says creation is God’s good and stable work sustained by divine faithfulness. These are not minor variations on a theme but radically different visions of ultimate reality. Engaging the Pyramid Texts has helped me see this difference not as abstract theology but as lived reality shaping how we understand ourselves, our world, our relationships, and our hope. For this reason, reading these ancient texts has been worth every hour spent wrestling with their complex worldview and recognizing both the common human religious impulse they express and the distinctive divine revelation Scripture claims to offer in response.

Conformed to His Image

Kenneth Boa’s book, Conformed to His Image, is one of the best books on spiritual formation from an Evangelical perspective. 

Kenneth Boa views spirituality as “A Gem with Many Facets.” He analyzes the twelve personality types of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and demonstrates how each type expresses spirituality. Here’s a concise overview of the twelve facets of a personal relationship with God through Christ. He asserts that there isn’t a single “correct” way to experience God; rather, each approach is valid, and the objective is to master as many of these facets as possible.

FACET 1
Relational Spirituality: Loving God Completely, Ourselves Correctly, and Others Compassionately
As a communion of three persons, God is a relational being. He originates a personal rela¬tionship with us, and our high and holy calling is to respond to his loving initiatives. By loving God completely, we discover who and whose we are as we come to see ourselves as God sees us. In this way, we become secure enough to become others-centered rather than self-centered, and this enables us to become givers rather than grabbers.

FACET 2
Paradigm Spirituality: Cultivating an Eternal versus a Temporal Perspective
This section contrasts the temporal and eternal value systems and emphasizes the need for a paradigm shift from a cultural to a biblical way of seeing life. The experience of our mortality can help us transfer our hope from the seen to the unseen and realize the preciousness of present opportunities. Our presuppositions shape our perspective, our perspective shapes our priorities, and our priorities shape our practice.

FACET 3
Disciplined Spirituality: Engaging in the Historical Disciplines
There has been a resurgence of interest in the classical disciplines of the spiritual life, and this section looks at the reasons for this trend and the benefits of the various disciplines. It also focuses on the needed balance between radical dependence on God and personal discipline and discusses the dynamics of obedience and application.

FACET 4
Exchanged Life Spirituality: Grasping Our True Identity in Christ
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the growth of an experiential approach to the spiritual life that is based on the believer's new identity in Christ. Identification with Christ in his crucifixion and resurrection (Romans 6; Galatians 2:20) means that our old life has been exchanged for the life of Christ. This approach to spirituality moves from a works to a grace orientation and from legalism to liberty because it centers on our acknowledgment that Christ's life is our life.

FACET 5
Motivated Spirituality: A Set of Biblical Incentives
People are motivated to satisfy their needs for security, significance, and fulfillment, but they turn to the wrong places to have their needs met. This section presents the option of looking to Christ rather than the world to meet our needs. A study of Scripture reveals a number of biblical motivators: these include fear, love and gratitude, rewards, identity, purpose and hope, and longing for God. Our task is to be more motivated by the things God declares to be impor¬tant than by the things the world says are important.

FACET 6
Devotional Spirituality: Falling in Love with God
What are the keys to loving God, and how can we cultivate a growing intimacy with him? This section explores what it means to enjoy God and to trust in him. Henry Scougal observed that "the worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love." We are most satisfied when we seek God's pleasure above our own, and we gradually become conformed to what we most love and admire.

FACET 7
Holistic Spirituality: Every Component of Life under the Lordship of Christ
There is a general tendency to treat Christianity as a component of life along with other com¬ponents such as family, work, and finances. This compartmentalization fosters a dichotomy between the secular and the spiritual. The biblical alternative is to understand the implica¬tions of Christ's lordship over every aspect of life in such a way that even the most mundane components of life can become expressions of the life of Christ in us.

FACET 8
Process Spirituality: Process versus Product, Being versus Doing
In our culture, we increasingly tend to be human doings rather than human beings. The world tells us that what we achieve and accomplish determines who we are, but the Scriptures teach that who we are in Christ should be the basis for what we do. The dynamics of growth are inside out rather than outside in. This section talks about becoming faithful to the process of life rather than living from one product to the next. It also focuses on what it means to abide in Christ and to practice his presence.

FACET 9
Spirit-Filled Spirituality: Walking in the Power of the Spirit
Although there are divergent views of spiritual gifts, Spirit-centered believers and Word¬-centered believers agree that until recently, the role of the Holy Spirit has been somewhat neg¬lected as a central dynamic of the spiritual life. This section considers how to appropriate the love, wisdom, and power of the Spirit and stresses the biblical implications of the Holy Spirit as a personal presence rather than a mere force.

FACET 10
Warfare Spirituality: The World, the Flesh, and the Devil
Spiritual warfare is not optional for believers in Christ. Scripture teaches and illustrates the dynamics of this warfare on the three fronts of the world, the flesh, and the devil. The worldly and demonic systems are external to the believer, but they entice and provide opportunities for the flesh, which is the capacity for sin within the believer. This section outlines a biblical strategy for dealing with each of these barriers to spiritual growth.

FACET 11
Nurturing Spirituality: A Lifestyle of Evangelism and Discipleship
The believer's highest call in ministry is to reproduce the life of Christ in others. Reproduction takes the form of evangelism for those who do not know Christ and edification for those who do. This section develops a philosophy of discipleship and evangelism and looks at edifica¬tion and evangelism as a way of life; lifestyle discipleship and evangelism are the most effec¬tive and realistic approaches to unbelievers and believers within our sphere of influence.

FACET 12
Corporate Spirituality: Encouragement, Accountability, and Worship
We come to faith as individuals, but we grow in community. This section discusses the need for community, challenges and creators of community, the nature and purpose of the church, soul care, servant leadership, accountability, and renewal.

CONCLUSION
Continuing on the Journey
What does it take to stay in the race? This concluding chapter considers a variety of issues related to finishing well, including intimacy with Christ, fidelity in the spiritual disciplines, a biblical perspective on the circumstances of life, teachability, personal purpose, healthy rela¬tionships, and ongoing ministry.


APPENDIX A:
The Need for Diversity
This appendix portrays the current hunger for spirituality and the reasons for this hunger. There are a variety of approaches to the spiritual life, but these are facets of a larger gem that is greater than the sum of its parts. Conformed to His Image takes a broader, more synthetic approach by looking at all of these facets and seeing how each can contribute to the whole. Some people are attracted to different facets, and this relates in part to our personality profile (the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a valuable tool for this purpose). Readers are asked to identify the ones they are most and least attracted to and are encour¬aged to stretch themselves by trying one they would normally not pursue.

APPENDIX B:
The Richness of Our Heritage
This appendix outlines a brief history of spirituality by tracing prominent approaches to the spiritual life through the ancient, medieval, and modern churches. This provides a broader perspective and a sense of continuity with others who have pursued intimacy with God before us. Twelve recurring issues and extremes emerge from this overview, and this appen¬dix concludes with a word about the variety of approaches that can illuminate our journey.

Commitment

Dennis Okholm, reviewing Kathleen Noris' book, Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life, writes,

In a society where acedia results in relationships that are recycled more often than aluminum cans, Norris insists that what is most likely to maintain a marriage is not giddy romance but discipline, martyrdom, and obedience (which, at its etymological root, refers to hearing): "The very nature of marriage means saying yes before you know what it will cost. You may say the 'I do' of the wedding ritual in all sincerity, but it is the testing of that vow over time that makes you married." Good advice in a culture where that "five-o'clock somewhere" mirage always beckons.


Books & Culture, September/October 2008, Vol. 14, No. 5, Page 10.

How Do We Change the Culture?

How Do We Change the Culture?

Here is an interesting summary of a part of a chapter in Andy Crouch’s Culture Making:

“The only way to change culture is to create more of it.”

Because culture is the accumulation of tangible things, not something vague or ethereal, it can be changed only by creating some new tangible things that gain a wide enough acceptance by the public to reshape their world. Since cultures are always “full,” one has to create something new that will convince enough people to set aside some current cultural good and exchange it for the new cultural good. However, Christians often choose other less effective strategies for changing the culture. Condemning the culture usually doesn’t work since people will continue to consume the cultural goods even if we disapprove of them. Critiquing the culture doesn’t work either, merely producing more sophisticated analyses that have no effect on people’s choices of cultural goods. Copying culture doesn’t work either since it merely creates a sub-culture that consumes its goods while the larger culture ignores them. Consuming culture is also a poor strategy for change since individual consumers have a negligible effect on a global, or even national, culture. Instead, the best way to change the culture is to create new cultural goods that are better or more attractive so that the public will consume them, and thus change the culture.

Deliver Greatness Every Day

VII. Summit Seven: Deliver Greatness, Every Day
“We give others the courage to do great things by our own example of doing great things.” Steve Ackerman
A. Witnessing Greatness Every Day
1. Who in your life do you currently most admire? Why? What does that person do, or demonstrate, that makes him worthy of your admiration?
2. Who do you currently most admire at work, at school, or in your community? Why? What does that person do, or demonstrate, that makes him worthy of your admiration?
3. Summit One: Take It On
a) How does that person take it on?
b) Where does that person fall on the Adversity Continuum?
c) If you had to guess, what assumptions do you think that person makes about adversity?
4. Summit Two: Summon Your Strengths
a) What is the toughest or most important thing you’ve seen that person pursue?
b) What skills did that person possess and develop to make it happen?
c) What strengths does that person summon in the face of adversity? Which ones do you most admire?
d) How do the teams that person assembles or joins complement his or her strengths to achieve a higher goal?
e) How does that person create positive interdependence, being roped together with others?
f) What does he bring to any team? Rate that person’s overall A Factor, W Factor, E Factor.
5. Summit Three: Engage Your CORE
a) Do you think that person has a high, moderate or low Adversity Quotient?
b) To what extent does that person tend to focus on what can be influenced (C), step up to make things better (O), contain bad things (R), and see or get past adverse events (E)?
c) On a scale of one to ten, how effectively does that person engage his CORE?
6. Summit Four: Pioneer Possibilities
a) What possibilities, big or small, has that person pioneered?
b) How does that person respond when someone says something import is impossible?
c) What Signature Systems have you seen that person apply?
7. Summit Five: Pack Light, Pack Right
a) On a scale of one to ten, where does that person score on Life Worth?
b) What examples can you think of when that person has forgone a desire in order to achieve something more important?
c) How effectively does that person strategically invest time, energy, and money on the things that matter most? To what extent does that person invest in his own well-being?
8. Summit Six: Suffer Well
a) What suffering, big or small, have you seen that person endure?
b) How did that person handle it? What effect did his approach to suffering have on others?
9. How would you describe that person’s relationship with adversity? Would you have chosen that person if he had never faced any adversity or had scored much lower on the Adversity Continuum?
B. Your Everyday Greatness Plan
1. Summit One: Take It On
a) Write down how you could take on and harness the adversity in a way that not only reduces your pain or achieves your goals, but also actually elevates others in the process. What lower level behavior do you need to stop? What’s the one thing that would have the most significant impact on your life and on those around you?
2. Summit Two: Summon Your Strengths
a) How can you summon your strengths to deliver greatness? What strengths do you have that will serve you best in this challenge and what strengths do you need to develop? Who do you need with you? Who must not be with you?
3. Summit Three: Engage Your CORE
a) How can you engage your CORE in a way that is uplifting to others?
4. Summit Four: Pioneer Possibilities
a) What challenges would most people consider impossible but would change the game if you could make them possible?
5. Summit Five: Pack Light, Pack Right
a) How can you pack light, pack right to have a positive impact on those around you?
6. Summit Six: Suffer Well
a) How can you respond to suffering in a way that encourages and empowers those around you?


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

Suffer Well

VI. Summit Six: Suffer Well
“I cannot imagine a fate more awful--a fate worse than death—than a life lived in perfect harmony and balance.” Carl Jung
The question in life is not whether you will ever have to suffer. Rather, it is this: When you do suffer, how will you suffer? Will you suffer poorly, or will you suffer well?
Suffering can be the highest-octane fuel for greatness. You need to learn to turn suffering into meaning and beauty, elevating everyone around you.
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” Helen Keller
A. Suffering Defined
1. To suffer is to endure something painful. The more something means to you the more painful it may be. The power of suffering is its ability to STRIP away superficialities, ego, and distractions.
a) S: Severity—the magnitude of the pain
b) T: Time—how long you must endure the pain
c) R: Relativity—how severe your pain is when you are compared with those around you and your situation is compared with your own past or other hardships
d) I: Importance—how much the thing for which you are suffering matters
e) P: Price—how much you may or will lose as a result of the adversity
B. Ten Common Cracks and Chasms
1. Whining
a) Whining is irritating and drives others away. Often it occurs when there is a lack of merit in the whiner. It also implies inaction; the whiner is venting instead of trying to solve the problem.
2. Complaining
a) Complaining, expressing unhappiness about something, is slightly more constructive than whining. Sometimes it is good and beneficial to express our unhappiness in order to come to grips with it and to get past it. However, when overdone, it makes us weak, drains our energy, and lessens our determination. It is also contagious.
3. Blaming
a) When you blame others you give up control, taking the problem out of your power to change it. When you blame you also miss out on a vital piece of your own development. Learn from your mistakes and then move on.
4. Identifying
a) Identifying means to become one with your suffering in a bad way. You limit your potential when you label yourself according to your suffering, robbing you of the opportunity to grow through your suffering.
5. Anesthetizing
a) Often we shut down emotionally, use drugs or alcohol, become workaholics, or other electronic devices, such as TV, video games, the internet, and the like.
6. Escaping
a) You can run from suffering, but you can’t hide from it. Procrastination is one of the most popular forms of escape. We can also become driven, engage in risky behavior, or look for other socially unacceptable means to deal with our pain.
7. Rationalizing
a) Overextended strengths can become weaknesses. We can explain away almost anything. It is healthy when it helps you make sense of your life so you can come to grips with the compromises you made that got you where you are. It is unhealthy when you reason yourself out of what is possible so we don’t take responsibility for our own choices.
8. Denying
a) Denying refuses to acknowledge the pain so we don’t have to deal with it. Our culture sets up standards for what are acceptable and unacceptable ways of dealing with pain and suffering, so be careful not to evaluate someone else’s response to suffering based on your cultural standards. Denial occurs when we fail to completely accept the full magnitude of our suffering, the resulting consequences, or the severity of the source. While denial can protect us, it also denies us the tremendous power and opportunity of our suffering.
9. Pretending
a) Pretending is acting as though what we know exists does not exist. Some pretending is good, such as smiling even when you are sad, and faking it until you make it, or putting on a good front so that others are not adversely affected by your suffering. However, if others discover your deception, it will hurt your credibility and you will lose their trust. Pretending is dangerous when it becomes a barrier between others and our suffering. It also denies others the opportunity to share in our suffering with us.
10. Whitewashing
a) This is a more subtle form of pretending where we embellish something to make it look better than it really is. Whitewashing can keep us from what is real, robbing us of the benefits suffering provides.
11. Principles to Keep in Mind
a) It is human nature to use these
b) To a point, most can be used positively and for good reasons
c) Overused, all become destructive
d) These are often used with the best of intentions
e) We all use them
f) If abused, they prevent us from suffering well
C. Types of Suffering
1. Physical Suffering
“Pain is God’s megaphone.” C. S. Lewis
2. Emotional Suffering
a) Emotional suffering gets less sympathy than physical suffering. It tends to be more contagious, one’s worries easily become the worries of another.
3. Mental Suffering
a) We suffer mentally when we can’t seem to figure out and resolve a matter of great importance. It manifests itself in conundrums, quandaries, confusion, and ignorance.
4. Spiritual Suffering
a) This is usually private and hidden and occurs when we feel adrift, faithless, purposeless, hopeless and unconnected. It often occurs when we have fallen short or done wrong in some matter of great importance.
“Suffering, cheerfully endured, ceases to be suffering and is transmuted into an ineffable joy.” Mahatma Gandhi
D. Suffer Check
1. Work and Life
a) What is your single greatest cause of suffering at work?
b) What is your single greatest cause of suffering in your life?
c) On a scale of 1 to 10, rate each based on the STRIP criteria:
(1) Severity, Time, Relativity, Importance, Price
(2) Score: 5-15 (little suffering), 16-30 (noticeable discomfort), 31-45 (real pain), 46-50 (extreme suffering)
E. Positive Pessimism
1. Help alleviate some of the pain by joking about it being worse than it really is: “I’m not the nicest guy in the world, but at least I’m stupid.” “We may be on a tight budget, but at least the heating bill doubled.”
F. Bad Suffering
1. Bad suffering occurs when it makes us less instead of more; bitter rather than better. When we become meaner, smaller, or more selfish as a result of our pain, that is bad suffering. Suffering can be the ultimate excuse to stop trying. It is dangerous because no one will blame you if you quit. Suffering badly can also become a cultural norm. Suffering poorly is your right, but suffering well is your opportunity.
G. Good Suffering
1. Good suffering is elevating. It happens when we allow suffering to make us better people because of what we’ve been through. Good suffering can help strip you of all that is not essential. It can sweep you clean of pettiness, making you more magnanimous and selfless. It can also spawn hope in others, giving them the courage they need to persevere through their difficulties.
“Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.” Aristotle
2. How to Suffer Well:
a) Use suffering to help and enrich others
b) Use it to become a better person by demonstrating your highest character and virtue in the face of pain
c) Turn inward and privately harness it to expand your capacity for hardship
d) Use and transcend it by attacking life with renewed determination
e) Be human and acknowledge when it’s hard or it hurts, refusing to pretend it does not exist, robbing yourself of the potential lessons
f) Ask for help when you need it
g) Turn your suffering into a cause
h) Be open about it, letting others learn from what you are going through
3. The Suffer Well
a) How?
(1) How am I going to elevate myself and others, starting now?
b) Who?
(1) Who is most affected by how I suffer?
c) What?
(1) What is my CORE with regard to your suffering? (Control, Ownership, Reach, Endurance)
d) Why?
(1) Why do I want to suffer well?
e) When?
(1) By when will I have said or done something that demonstrates my commitment to suffer well?
4. The Suffer Shifter
a) The one area in which I currently suffer the most is:
b) On the basis of all I have learned about suffering poorly, one specific thing I commit myself to stop doing or do less of is:
c) On the basis of all I have learned about suffering poorly, one specific thing I commit myself to start doing more of is:
d) As a result of these commitments, I and the people around me should enjoy the following benefits:


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

Pack Light, Pack Right

V. Summit Five: Pack Light, Pack Right
“It’s tough to climb a mountain if you pack too much or if pack incorrectly. Likewise, it’s tough to be agile and effective at harnessing numerous adversities each day if you’re weighed down by all the competing priorities vying for your focus. When this happens, everyday distractions bury the potential for everyday greatness.”
A. Packing Right
1. Stuff
“You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.” Eric Hoffer
“Everyday greatness means rising above mediocrity, even then the gravitational pull is enormous. It means moving forward and up, when everyone else is camping. Sometimes it can even mean escaping comfort and welcoming adversity.”
a) Why More Has Become Less
(1) More stuff leads to more complexity, which leads to less time, less peace of mind, and less capacity to take on more important challenges.
(2) Often, the more we add the weaker we become.
b) Which Stuff is the Right Stuff?
(1) What is mission-critical for your life?
(2) The right stuff is the stuff that most enables and least hinders your efforts to deliver your own version of everyday greatness--to do the things you are meant to do in life.
c) How Much is Enough?
(1) Since most of us live well beyond “need” and well within “want” most of what we have is unnecessary.
(2) Pleasures are not evil, but if they detract from your higher calling, or worse yet, become your calling, you have a problem.
(3) Your desires should enable you to achieve your highest efforts. If they don’t, then they must be cut out.
(4) How much is enough? Exactly as much as it takes todo the thing you have been created and called to do.
d) Net Worth vs. Life Worth
“The cost of a thing is the amount of … life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” Henry David Thereau
(1) Net Worth
(a) Net Worth is what is left when you subtract everything you owe from everything you have.
(2) Life Worth
(a) Life Worth is the value you get from and give to life. It includes the stuff you give to life (love, energy, charity, thoughtfulness, kindness, etc.) and the stuff you get as a result (fulfillment, peace, contentment, etc.). What is your life worth?
(3) Net Worth-Life Worth Grid
(a) Step One
(i) Put an X at the spot that represents the balance you are striving for.
(b) Step Two
(i) Put a dot at the spot that indicates where you are right now
(c) Step Three
(i) Draw an arrow indicating the direction you are moving
(d) Consider Your Grid
(i) What’s the ideal combination of net worth and Life Worth? Most chose more Life Worth than net worth, and some choose the maximum of both. Very few chose more net worth over Life Worth.
(ii) How happy are you with your current balance of net worth and Life Worth? How close is it to where you want to be at this stage in your life? Do you let the pursuit of comfort get in the way of your higher cause?
(e) The Role of Adversity in Life Worth
(i) Adversity forces you to make tough choices between net worth and Life Worth.
(f) Repacking for Life Worth
(i) Take some time to spring clean your life and get rid of what you don’t need and add what you do need. Consider keeping, or adding, things that enhance the three A’s: Agility, Alchemy, and Adversity. If something hinders your capacity and weighs you down, get rid of it.
(g) Pack Check: Stuff
(i) Evaluate everything in your life and find at least five things that you can eliminate from your life to lighten your load, improve your agility and increase your energy. Ask these questions: Does my stuff…
(a) Hurt or help my agility?
(b) Sap or fuel my energy?
(c) Makes me worse or better?
(d) Suffocate or maximize my Life Worth?
(ii) What is one significant change I can make in how I use my money that will most directly fund my Life Worth?
(iii) What is one challenge or adversity I will confront to lighten my burden and increase my Life Worth?
(iv) So far, the most important lesson I’ve learned about stuff is…?
2. Time
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Annie Dillard
a) Just as indifference is the enemy of passion, worthless time is the enemy of achieving everyday greatness, and it is the demon of any enterprise. What things in your life are stealing your time and keeping you from achieving the most important thing in your life? Spend time and relentlessly evaluate all the time wasters you engage in and cut them out of your life.
b) The Time Challenge
(1) Level One Challenge: The Basics
(a) Which items on your calendar are critical? Why?
(b) Which items on your calendar are least enriching? Why?
(c) What are two or three things you could shed from your week that would substantially increase your Life Worth?
(2) Level Two Challenge: Advanced
(a) On a blank sheet of paper list all of your roles in life on the left-hand side (father, son, brother, boss, employee, coworker, student, etc.)
(b) Next to each role list one thing you have on your calendar for the next week that will most enhance your Life Worth in that role.
(c) List one challenge or adversity you would like to take on in each role to become more effective in that role.
(d) List one simple thing next to each role that you will commit to do over the coming week that will enhance your Life Worth.
(3) Pack Check: Time
(a) Evaluate everything in your schedule and eliminate those that diminish your agility and sap your energy. Ask these questions: Do my obligations…
(i) Hurt or help my agility?
(ii) Sap or fuel my energy?
(iii) Make me worse or better?
(iv) Suffocate or maximize my Life Worth?
(b) What is one significant change I can make in how I use my time that will most directly fund my Life Worth?
(c) What is one challenge or adversity I will confront to lighten my burden and increase my Life Worth?
(d) So far, the most important lesson I’ve learned about my use of time is…?
3. Work
“I believe you are your work. Don’t trade the stuff of your life, time, for nothing more than dollars. That’s a rotten bargain.” Rita Mae Brown
a) Prime Time—The Human Energy Grid
(1) What are the prime energy years of a contributing person’s life? Age 25-55
(2) What are the prime energy hours of a contributing person’s day? 7 am to 3 pm
(3) What are the prime energy days of a contributing person’s week? Monday through Thursday
b) Elevating the Day Job
(1) The first way is to infuse your present job with more Life Worth. Find ways to give your best in ways that add value to the lives of others.
c) From Paycheck to Reality Check
(1) The second way is to choose a job that adds to your Life Worth by allowing you to do something that is deeply important and adds value to other people.
d) Pack Check: Work
(1) What adjustments could you make at work to enhance your Life Worth, lighten your load, improve your agility, and increase your energy?
(2) On a scale of one to ten, to what extent does your current work affect your agility, energy, and ability to achieve everyday greatness?
(3) Ask these questions: Does my current work…
(a) Hurt or help my agility?
(b) Sap or fuel my energy?
(c) Make me worse or better?
(d) Suffocate or maximize my Life Worth?
(4) What is one significant change I can make in my work that will most directly improve my Life Worth?
(5) What is one challenge or adversity I will add to my work to increase my Life Worth?
(6) So far, the most important lesson I’ve learned about my work is…?
4. Self
“Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God, and value it next to a good conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of, —a blessing that money can’t buy.” Izaak Walton
a) How far can you go in life if you are exhausted, out of shape, spiritually empty, and emotionally spent? You need to take time to invest in yourself and achieve your best so you can give your best to others. Schedule time into your life to refuel and rejuvenate so you can elevate your life to a higher level.
b) Pack Check: Self
(1) What adjustments could you make in the way you treat yourself to enhance your Life Worth, lighten your load, improve your agility, and increase your energy?
(2) On a scale of one to ten, to what extent does the way you treat yourself affect your agility, energy, and ability to achieve everyday greatness?
(3) Ask these questions: Does the way I treat myself …
(a) Hurt or help my agility?
(b) Sap or fuel my energy?
(c) Make me worse or better?
(d) Suffocate or maximize my Life Worth?
(4) What is one significant change I can make in the way I treat myself that will most directly improve my Life Worth?
(5) What is one challenge or adversity I will add to my week to refuel and increase my Life Worth?
(6) So far, the most important lesson I’ve learned about how to treat myself is…?
c) Life is too short and too precious to load it down with anything or anyone who depletes our potential to become and do our best. It is my moral obligation to myself as honed as possible so I can have the greatest impact on the areas that truly matter the most, including helping others increase their Life Worth.
B. The Adversity Advantage Packing List
1. Stuff
a) What item or items could you purchase or add that would improve your three A’s?
2. Time
a) What is a new obligation or something to add to your schedule that would improve your three A’s?
3. Work
a) What will you add to your work to make it richer in Life Worth?
4. Self
a) What will you add to your life to optimize your energy, your outlook, and the three A’s?


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

Pioneering Possibilities

IV. Summit Four: Pioneer Possibilities
A. That’s Impossible
1. Thank people for being caring enough to look out for your best interests.
2. But then ask, “What if…? What if the thing you’ve always dreamed of doing is possible? How would it feel to be the one who made it happen? What if, by making the impossible possible, you opened a whole new world of opportunities for yourself, your organization, and the people around you?”
3. The first step to greatness is to select an adversity-rich, worthy challenge that will stretch you in new ways and represent new possibilities, if achieved.
4. The second step is to create a plan and engineer the systems that will be the key to helping you get there.
5. The third step is to practice to perfect so you can make those systems work when they count the most.

B. What is Pioneering?
1. Do you spend most of your time doing the tried and true or do you continually invent new ways of getting things done?
2. Plate: “The true creator is necessity, which is the mother of our invention.”
3. Three Steps of Pioneering:
a) Pick a worthy goal
b) Devise signature systems
c) Practice to perfect

C. Pick a Worthy Goal
1. Ask: What if I could do something that has never been done before?
2. Factors to consider:
a) Motivation: Why do you want to do it? Tie it to a higher, grander purpose.
b) Strengths: (Will + Skill = Strengths) To what extent would this goal leverage existing strengths or require the forging of new ones? Do you have the will necessary to achieve this goal?
c) Excitement: How excited does this goal make you?

D. Devise Signature Systems
1. You may need to invent new ways of doing things that are customized to your needs and situation. These solutions become uniquely yours.
2. “If necessity is the mother of invention, then adversity is the parent of our possibilities.”
3. The best solutions are PROPS:
a) Portable: you can take them from place to place.
b) Replicable or Repeatable: they can be readily rebuilt, reused or repeated.
c) Original: they tend to be clever and unique.
d) Personal: they fit and are adapted to you, your unique style and needs.
e) Simple: they require a minimum of steps, hassles, and resources.

E. Practice to Perfect
1. Adapt, revise and improve the systems until they are perfected. Don’t get discouraged but keep at it. Most ingenious systems are the result of tenacity, relentlessness and perseverance, not genius or brilliance.
2. Questions to ask:
a) What are the criteria for an effective Signature System or solution?
b) Where and how can you practice with the new system?
c) What will you try first?
d) How will you refine your solution?
e) Where or how else might you try it?
f) Who can give you helpful feedback?
g) When or how soon can you begin?
h) How long do you need to figure it out?


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

Engage Your CORE

III. Summit Three: Engage Your CORE
“There is a mechanism or switch,, deep within you, which can be triggered whenever any type of adversity strikes. Engaging your CORE is about rewiring your response to adversity by using a new set of tools so you can take advantage of the hardships that accompany anything big and worthwhile.”
“Your CORE is derived from your Adversity Quotient (AQ), which is a measure of how you respond to adversity of all kinds—how you respond to the world around you. It predicts and drives a host of factors that are critical to success. High AQ people rise to the top and tend to outperform, outlast, outmaneuver, and outdo their low-AQ counterparts, in essentially all endeavors.”

A. Factors critical to success:
1. Performance
2. Resilience
3. Engagement
4. Innovation
5. Attitude, morale, outlook
6. Energy
7. Problem solving
8. Health
9. Entrepreneurism
10. Agility
11. Longevity

B. Standing Up to Adversity
1. Your Adversity “Posture” is ten percent genetic and ninety percent learned.
2. By age 12 your AQ Posture is highly formed and by age 16 it is hardwired for the rest of your life
3. You must become aware of it and choose to change it

C. Using AQ: Know Your CORE
1. C: Control
a) Control is often abused by authority figures.
b) In contrast, the Serenity Prayer shows that there are things that we can control and things we can’t.
c) The aspect of control that matters the most is Influence. The most important question is not whether you are in complete control but when adversity strikes, to what extent do you perceive that you can influence whatever happens next?
d) Control is the most robust in predicting health and longevity. Those who perceive they have more control over how they do what they do tend to live nearly a full decade longer than those who accept their lot in life.
e) Engage your CORE by asking, “What facets of this situation or adversity can I potentially influence?”  

2. O: Ownership
a) Ask, “How likely are you to step up to do anything to improve the situation, regardless of your job description?”
b) Don’t waste energy trying to pinpoint blame or shoulder all the responsibility yourself.
c) Do something, no matter how small, to make things better.
d) Usually you need to step up and take ownership when you least feel like doing it.
e) Engage your CORE by asking, “What can I do to affect this situation r adversity immediately and positively?”
f) Don’t give away your power or momentum by waiting for others but focus on your realm, your ownership, and then watch others do the same.

3. R: Reach
a) How does one adversity affect other areas of your life? Many engage in catastrophizing, or allowing one thing that goes wrong to spill over into other areas. Seeing a setback as devastating will stop you, but seeing it as merely one small setback will give you the ability to pick up the pieces and keep moving forward.
b) The better you are at containing difficulties the lighter you feel and the more effective you will be. The bigger and worse everything appears the more suffocating life becomes, making it difficult to keep your footing.
c) Engage your CORE to limit the size, scope, and fallout of your adversities by asking, “What can I do to minimize or contain the downside of this situation?” and “What can I do to optimize the potential upside of this situation?”
d) Dreamy optimists are dangerous but engaged optimists are hopeful that their relentless, strategically focused efforts will increase the chance that things will turn out better over time.

4. E: Endurance
a) When adversity strikes, Endurance involves asking, “How long do you predict it will last or endure?”
b) High AQ people can see past the adversity and view the worst circumstances as temporary.
c) Engage your CORE by asking, “How can I get through this as quickly as possible?”

d) Play the SUMMIT GAME: See yourself as having already made it through the adversity and accomplished your goal. Visualize with as much detail as possible and you will be energized to endure the adversity.

e) The FAILURE FANTASY: Visualize in vivid detail the pain and agony that will result if you allow yourself to fail. This will motivate you to endure and not give up.

D. Building your CORE
1. The best way to build your CORE is through heightened awareness, with feedback from multiple sources.  

2. The CORE Panorama
a) On a scale of one to ten, how effectively do I respond to adversity?
b) Am I more effective with certain kinds of adversities than others? If so, which one am I better or worse at? Am I better at dealing with big adversities or the small, day-to-day stuff?
c) Are there certain times when I deal better with adversity than others? If so, when? What have I observed?
d) What is the most positive or negative example of how I dealt with adversity?
e) If I drew a line or continuum ranging from “helpless” to “in control” where would I typically fall when adversity strikes?
f) When the tough stuff hits, how likely am I to step up to do even the smallest thing to make the situation better?
g) How well do you think I do at keeping the adversity in its place? Do I contain the adversity or do I tend to let it spill over into everything else?
h) How long do I tend to let adversities last?
i) What do I like best about the way I handle adversity? What do I like least? Why?
j) What would be an example of a time when I have done what I just described?
k) If I were coaching me on how to handle adversity more effectively, what is the one thing I’d like me to do more, less, or differently?

3. Consider Your CORE
a) When adversity strikes, make it a habit to ask, “What’s my CORE?”
b) How much Control am I feeling or indicating?
c) To what extent am I taking Ownership and stepping up to tackle this situation?
d) How far am I willing to let this Reach? How big am I letting it become?
e) How long do I see this Enduring? To what extent am I letting this drag on?

4. Recognizing CORE
a) Analyze other people’s situations to find instances of CORE or its absence.  

5. Employ the CORE Strategy
a) Control
(1) What is everything beyond our control? What things do most people consider out of our control?
(2) Of those things listed, which ones are absolutely beyond our influence? Which ones can we influence, even in some small way?
(3) Of the things we could potentially influence in this situation, which two are the most important?

b) Ownership
(1) Where and how can we step up to make the most immediate positive difference in this situation?

c) Reach
(1) What is the worst thing that could happen?
(2) If we allowed ourselves to think outrageously, what is the best thing that could happen?
(3) What things can we do to minimize the potential downside of this situation?
(4) What things can we do to maximize the potential upside of this situation?

d) Endurance
(1) What do we want life to look like on the other side of this adversity?
(2) What else can we do to get there as quickly and completely as possible?

e) The Action Funnel
(1) Which actions first?
(2) By when?
(3) How will I do it?
(4) What is the most likely obstacle?
(5) How will I deal with it?
(6) If the first action fails or falls short, then what?
(7) By when?
(8) How?



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