Demosthenes: On the Crown — The Man Who Could Not Save Athens and the Glory That Belongs to God Alone

The year is 330 BC. Philip II of Macedon is dead, but his son Alexander has completed what his father began — the subjugation of the Greek world. Athens, the city that once turned back the Persian empire at Marathon and Salamis, now lives in the shadow of a Macedonian hegemon. Into this aftermath steps Demosthenes, the greatest orator antiquity ever produced, to defend not only his friend Ctesiphon — who had proposed awarding him a golden crown for public service — but his entire career, his every decision, his very soul. On the Crown, delivered with the ferocity of a man who has nothing left to lose, is the speech by which all oratory in the Western tradition has measured itself. What Demosthenes did not know — what he could not have known — was that the speech he gave to vindicate himself before a jury of fellow Athenians would become, through the providence of a God he never worshipped, a mirror in which the Apostle Paul would one day see his own calling, and in which you may see yours.

The Orator and His World: Athens Between Glory and Defeat

To read On the Crown well, you need to feel the weight of the world in which it was written. Athens in 330 BC was not the Athens of Pericles’ Funeral Oration, that confident city standing at the height of its imperial power and announcing to the world that it alone had proved that democracy, courage, and culture could flourish together. The Athens Demosthenes addressed was a city that had fought and lost — lost at Chaeronea in 338 BC, where Philip’s cavalry shattered the Greek alliance and ended any realistic hope of independent Greek resistance. Demosthenes had urged that resistance. He had spent decades in the public assembly warning Athens and the other city-states that Philip of Macedon was not a fellow Greek to be negotiated with but a tyrant to be resisted. He had poured himself into the Philippics, those magnificent speeches of alarm that bear Philip’s name, and he had succeeded in forging a Greek coalition — only to see it broken in a single afternoon on a field in Boeotia. Aeschines, his rival and Philip’s ally, now prosecuted his friend Ctesiphon on technical legal grounds, but the real target was Demosthenes himself. The prosecution was an attempt to make Chaeronea his personal verdict: you warned Athens, you led Athens, and Athens lost. You deserve not a crown but condemnation. Against this charge, Demosthenes rose to speak.

The Architecture of Self-Defense: Rhetoric and the Soul

The literary achievement of On the Crown is inseparable from its rhetorical form. Demosthenes deploys all three of Aristotle’s modes of persuasion — ethos, pathos, and logos — with a mastery that later teachers of rhetoric would spend centuries analyzing and imitating. The speech belongs to the genre of forensic oratory, a formal defense before a jury, but Demosthenes transforms it into something more: an epideictic celebration of Athenian greatness and a deliberative argument about what statesmanship requires. He constructs his own character throughout — the devoted patriot, the man who spent his personal fortune on the public good, the statesman who chose principle over safety — while systematically dismantling Aeschines as a third-rate actor turned opportunistic politician unworthy of the city’s trust. His narrative of the fall of Elatea, the moment when Philip’s forces occupied a strategic position that left Athens almost defenseless and the assembly sat in paralyzed silence, is one of the most dramatic passages in all of ancient literature: enargeia at its finest, making the listener see, hear, and feel the terror of that night. The speech’s internal coherence is achieved through ring composition, thematic contrast, and a relentless return to the question of character — not whether Athens won, but what kind of men her leaders were and what Athens owed to those who chose rightly even when fortune turned against them. Paul, trained in the rhetorical traditions of the Hellenistic world that Demosthenes’ legacy had shaped, would draw on precisely this structural logic when he composed his own defense of his apostolic ministry in 2 Corinthians 10-12.

What the Prophets Said Before Demosthenes Spoke

The Old Testament does not know Demosthenes, but it knows everything he was contending with — the fragility of human political power, the temptation of nations to trust in military alliances and oratorical brilliance rather than in the living God, and the terrible clarity that comes when those resources finally fail. The prophet Isaiah, addressing a Judah that faced its own superpower threat in the form of Assyria and later Babylon, could have been writing the epitaph for the Greek coalition that broke at Chaeronea: “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the Lord” (Isaiah 31:1). Demosthenes’ political theology, to use the term anachronistically but accurately, rested on the conviction that Athens had a duty rooted in its own glorious traditions — the traditions of Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea — to defend Greek freedom regardless of the cost. This is not nothing. The OT prophets similarly called Israel to covenant faithfulness rather than capitulation in the face of imperial power. But the comparison has a limit, and the limit is decisive: Demosthenes’ framework had no doctrine of divine sovereignty and no theology of redemptive suffering. When his coalition failed, all he could do was appeal to Fortune — Tyche, the blind goddess of circumstance — and argue that his policies were morally right even if the gods had arranged a different outcome. The prophets of Israel knew something Demosthenes did not: that the outcome was not in Fortune’s hands but in the Lord’s, and that national defeat was not the end of the story.

The Apostle Who Answered the Orator: 2 Corinthians and On the Crown

The most electrifying connection between On the Crown and the New Testament is structural and purposeful rather than a matter of direct literary borrowing: Paul’s Fool’s Speech in 2 Corinthians 10 through 12 inhabits the same rhetorical genre as Demosthenes’ masterpiece. Both are apologia — formal self-defense speeches — delivered by men whose authority has been publicly attacked and whose entire ministry or career has been put on trial. Both speakers are forced to boast in their own credentials in circumstances where self-boasting was culturally understood to be the appropriate response to an opponent’s attack on one’s character. Both tear down the ethos of their accusers while building their own. The parallels in structure are striking and well-established by New Testament scholarship: Paul almost certainly knew the Demosthenic tradition, having been educated in Tarsus in a Hellenistic rhetorical environment saturated with classical models. But the differences between the two speeches are as theologically significant as the similarities. Demosthenes boasts of his lineage, his financial generosity, his foresight, his courage — the conventional credentials of the Athenian statesman. Paul, by scandalous contrast, boasts of his weaknesses, his beatings, his imprisonments, his near-drownings, his humiliating escape from Damascus in a basket lowered over the city wall. Where Demosthenes argues that his policies were right because they reflected the highest values of Athenian civilization, Paul argues that his authority is authenticated precisely where human achievement collapses — in the moment when Christ says to him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). This is not a refinement of Demosthenes’ rhetoric. It is its inversion, and the inversion is gospel.

From Fortune to Providence: The God Whom Demosthenes Never Found

Demosthenes’ appeal to Tyche — Fortune — is the moment at which his speech, for all its magnificence, reveals the fault line running through every human attempt to construct a complete account of history without God. He argues, rightly and movingly, that the moral quality of a decision must be judged by the values and information available at the moment of decision, not by the outcome that a hostile Fortune subsequently arranges. He is correct that the defeat at Chaeronea does not by itself prove that his policies were wrong — history is more complex than that, and he demonstrates as much with careful argument. But he cannot give his audience anything more than the consolation of having been right while losing. He has no answer to the deepest question his speech raises: if Fortune governs the outcome, then what guarantee does any statesman have that courage and integrity will ever produce anything beyond a beautiful defeat? The New Testament answers this question not with a philosophical argument but with an event. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the declaration that the God who governs history is not Fortune but Father — not blind chance but sovereign grace — and that the suffering of those who live faithfully within his purposes is not a turn of bad luck but a participation in a redemptive story whose ending has already been written. Chrysostom, preaching in a city shaped by the Greek rhetorical tradition Demosthenes had defined, understood this contrast. He drew on the classical tradition of moral exhortation — the tradition that produced On the Crown — but he anchored it in a theology of divine providence that transformed its meaning entirely. Demosthenes could tell Athens why it was worth dying for freedom. Chrysostom could tell Constantinople why it was worth dying for Christ — and why death itself was not the final word.

What a Defeated Orator Teaches the Church

Reading On the Crown as a Christian is an exercise in what Augustine called “spoiling the Egyptians” — taking what is genuinely excellent in the pagan tradition and consecrating it to the service of truth. The benefits are real and specific. Demosthenes teaches you what sustained public courage looks like across a lifetime of opposition. He teaches you how to construct an argument, how to deploy narrative, how to make an audience feel the weight of a moment, how to build ethos through consistency of character rather than through mere claim. He teaches you that integrity and foresight are not merely virtues for private life but requirements for any kind of public leadership — in the church, in the family, in whatever arena God has placed you. The early church fathers recognized this. Augustine’s own rhetorical education, which gave him the tools he would use to preach the gospel with devastating precision, was built on the Greek and Latin classical tradition that Demosthenes represents at its highest point. But there is a limit to what On the Crown can teach you, and naming that limit honestly is itself an act of intellectual and theological integrity. Demosthenes can show you what it looks like to speak truth at personal cost. He cannot show you why speaking truth at personal cost is worth it when the outcome is defeat and your civilization is broken. Only the gospel can do that — because only the gospel locates the meaning of costly faithfulness not in the verdict of a human jury but in the judgment of the God who raises the dead.

The Crown That Does Not Fade

Ctesiphon’s proposed golden crown was never awarded. Aeschines lost the case and fled Athens in humiliation, but the political moment had passed, and the crown that Athens debated became a footnote to a defeat that could not be undone. Demosthenes himself died within a few years, swallowing poison to avoid capture by Macedonian agents, alone on the island of Calauria. He had spent his life, his fortune, and finally his life itself in the service of a cause that history records as a magnificent, tragic failure. Stand here for a moment and feel the weight of it, because it is real, and the Christian faith does not ask you to pretend otherwise. But then hear what Paul writes to the Corinthians, in the same letter that contains his own Demosthenic self-defense, from a prison cell facing the same kind of imminent death: “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1). Demosthenes put everything on the freedom of Athens. Athens fell. Paul put everything on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ rose. The question On the Crown finally puts to you is not whether you admire Demosthenes — you should, profoundly and gratefully — but in whom you have placed your own life. There is a crown that does not fade, awarded not by a human jury but by the living God, to all who have loved the appearing of his Son (2 Timothy 4:8). Demosthenes never found it. The Spirit of God is offering it to you now.

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Xenophon: Anabasis — The Mirror of Command: the Heart Behind Leadership

Few books from the ancient world place character under a more unsparing light than Xenophon's Anabasis. Written around 370 BCE, it recounts one of history's most harrowing military adventures: ten thousand Greek mercenaries, hired by the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger to help him seize his brother's throne, find themselves leaderless in the heart of Mesopotamia after Cyrus is killed at the Battle of Cunaxa in 401 BCE. Their generals are then murdered through treachery, and the survivors must march roughly fifteen hundred miles through hostile mountains, deserts, and rivers to reach the Black Sea and safety. What makes the Anabasis endure is not merely its military drama but its deliberate moral anatomy. Xenophon, who was himself one of those survivors and eventually their leader, writes in the third person and constructs the narrative as a series of character portraits — what ancient rhetoricians called ethopoeia — revealing not just what men did under pressure but what they were, and what their choices ultimately cost or rewarded them. You are about to encounter a text that ancient readers recognized as a treatise on the soul of leadership, and if you read it through the lens of Scripture, its judgments cut even deeper than Xenophon intended.

Soldiers, Scholars, and the Shadow of Socrates

Xenophon was a student of Socrates, and that discipleship shaped every line of the Anabasis. Like Socrates, he believed that virtue could be examined through conduct and that the outcomes of a man's life revealed the quality of his inner formation. The Anabasis belongs to a rich tradition of Greek literature concerned with the relationship between arete — excellence or virtue — and successful leadership. Homer's Iliad had already posed this question through the rivalry of Achilles and Agamemnon, where brilliance without self-mastery destroys more than it builds. Thucydides examined it through statesmen who trusted cleverness over character and paid for it with catastrophe. Xenophon inherits this tradition and sharpens it through five contrasting portraits, each representing a different answer to the question of what kind of man survives, and why. The literary method of the Anabasis also draws on the traditions of the ancient Near East, where royal inscriptions and wisdom literature regularly evaluated rulers by the justice and piety of their conduct. The text does not simply tell stories. It builds a moral argument by placing characters in situations where the hidden content of their hearts is forced into the open, and it lets the reader draw conclusions from what they see.

The Prince Who Could Not Wait: Cyrus the Younger

Cyrus the Younger is Xenophon's most complex and in some ways most heartbreaking portrait, because his failures are woven so tightly into his genuine virtues that separating them is nearly impossible. Xenophon describes him as the most kinglike Persian since Cyrus the Great — modest with his elders, scrupulous in keeping his word, swift to reward courage and punish cruelty, and possessed of a magnetic personal loyalty that drew exceptional men to his service. As satrap of Lydia he made his territory safe for the innocent to travel freely, a remarkable achievement in an era of routine extortion. His soldiers loved him with something close to devotion, and Xenophon's admiration is evident on almost every page. Yet this same Cyrus recruited the Greek mercenaries through calculated deception, presenting a campaign aimed at seizing the Persian throne as a minor punitive expedition against local troublemakers. He told no lies to anyone, Xenophon says in one breath, and then documents the foundational lie of the entire enterprise in the next — a contradiction Xenophon never fully resolves, perhaps because he genuinely admired Cyrus too much to press the charge. At the Battle of Cunaxa, with the Greeks performing brilliantly on the right wing and the battle turning in his favor, Cyrus abandoned strategic patience and charged directly at his brother Artaxerxes, wounding him in the chest before being cut down by the royal bodyguard. He died at the moment of apparent success, destroyed by the very boldness that had made him so admirable. The Old Testament illuminates what Xenophon can only observe. Proverbs 16:18 declares that pride goes before destruction, and Cyrus's final charge was less a tactical decision than the expression of a soul that could not tolerate the gap between its ambitions and their fulfillment. He was, in Old Testament terms, a man of genuine but incomplete virtue — like Uzziah in 2 Chronicles 26, whose faithfulness brought remarkable success until the prosperity itself fed a pride that reached beyond appointed limits and brought ruin. Cyrus had almost everything needed for greatness. What he lacked was the one thing no military campaign could supply: a heart humbled before a authority higher than his own ambition.

The Soldier Who Loved War More Than Men: Clearchus the Spartan

If Cyrus represents virtue corrupted by unchecked ambition, Clearchus the Spartan represents something colder and in some ways more straightforward: a man who had entirely organized his soul around the wrong love. Xenophon describes him as a thorough soldier who loved war the way other men love gambling or romantic passion — compulsively, at the expense of everything else, squandering his personal fortune on military equipment and campaigns the way an addict spends on his addiction. His physical presence communicated this inner architecture: a scowling expression, a harshly grating voice, a bearing that projected intimidation rather than invitation. He led entirely through fear, operating on the explicit philosophy that a soldier must dread his commander more than the enemy. In a genuine crisis this approach produced results. When his men initially refused to march against the Persian king, Clearchus combined a show of force with a calculated public display of weeping — a piece of emotional manipulation carefully designed to make his troops feel they were choosing to follow him rather than being compelled, even though compulsion was precisely what was happening. The performance worked, and in that moment Clearchus demonstrated both his tactical intelligence and the fundamental dishonesty at the center of his leadership. Once a crisis passed, however, his authority dissolved almost immediately, because it had no foundation in genuine care for the men he commanded. They obeyed him when the situation left them no alternative; they did not trust him, and they had no reason to. He walked into Tissaphernes's trap — a conference called under a flag of truce, an offer he should have refused given everything he knew about Persian negotiating habits — and was seized, transported to the Persian court, and beheaded. Clearchus was a capable man destroyed not by incompetence but by a character that had been systematically formed around domination rather than relationship. Scripture addresses this pattern with unusual directness. First Peter 5:2-3 instructs elders to shepherd the flock not by domineering over those in their charge but as examples to them — a negative prescription that assumes the domineering impulse is always near. Paul's description of his own leadership in First Thessalonians 2:7-8 offers the contrast in the warmest possible terms: he was gentle among them like a nursing mother, sharing not just the gospel but his very self, because they had become dear to him. Clearchus had made himself effective by ensuring he was feared; Paul had made himself effective by ensuring he was loved. The difference was not merely stylistic. It was the difference between a leadership grounded in power and a leadership grounded in the kind of self-giving that makes authority credible precisely because it costs something.

The Good Man Who Was Not Enough: Proxenus the Boeotian

Proxenus the Boeotian is perhaps the most quietly tragic figure in the Anabasis, because his failure is the failure of goodness without wisdom — and that is a failure modern Christians are particularly prone to misread. He had studied under the great rhetorician Gorgias, the finest teacher of persuasive communication in the Greek world, and he came to the expedition hoping to achieve a great name and wide wealth through distinguished service. Xenophon says he had the art of leading gentlemen but could not command rough soldiers, and this distinction is precise. He could inspire and organize men who had already chosen to behave well. He was entirely at a loss with men who had not made that choice and had no intention of making it. He believed, fatally, that praising the virtuous was sufficient for command — that if you consistently affirmed what was admirable and avoided punishing what was base, right conduct would gradually prevail. It was a theory of leadership built entirely on the expectation that other people were as fundamentally decent as he was. When they were not, he had no instruments left. His soldiers lost respect for him without ceasing to like him, which is a particularly demoralizing combination, because it meant they exploited his gentleness without feeling guilty about it. He served as a mediator in disputes between other commanders' troops — a role that suited his temperament and for which he had genuine gifts — but mediation is not the same as command, and when the crisis arrived after Cunaxa, his inability to maintain discipline among his own troops made him a liability rather than an asset. He was executed alongside Clearchus at the age of thirty, a fundamentally decent man whose goodness had not been tempered into the kind of strength the situation required. Matthew 10:16, where Jesus instructs his disciples to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, names exactly the integration Proxenus lacked. His innocence was real, but it was not accompanied by the discernment that would have made it durable. The wisdom literature of the Old Testament makes a similar point in Proverbs 1:7, where the fear of the Lord is named as the beginning of wisdom — not kindness, not good intentions, not rhetorical education, but a settled orientation toward God that produces the kind of judgment that cannot be purchased from Gorgias. Proxenus had been formed by the best that Greek education could offer, and it was not enough. What he lacked was not information or even effort but a formation of soul deep enough to hold its shape under pressure.

The Man Who Made Corruption His Strategy: Menon the Thessalian

Menon the Thessalian is Xenophon's deliberately repellent portrait, and repellent is precisely the right word, because Xenophon does not present him as a villain who conceals his villainy but as a man who has consciously made corruption his operating system. He is motivated by an insatiable desire for wealth, and what distinguishes him from the merely greedy is that he has developed a coherent philosophy to justify every instrument of acquisition. He regarded honesty as weakness, truth as folly, and prided himself on his capacity for fraud and his ability to mock friends while maintaining their confidence. He secured his soldiers' obedience not through the fear Clearchus inspired or the affection Proxenus cultivated but by becoming an accomplice in their misdeeds — allowing them to steal, bully, and exploit because men who are permitted to sin at their commander's pleasure will follow that commander anywhere. He crossed the Euphrates river early, before the other contingents were ready, specifically to win Cyrus's approval through a calculated display of eagerness — a move that was not courage but theater, designed to purchase influence through the appearance of loyalty rather than its reality. Every action Menon takes in the Anabasis is a transaction, every relationship an instrument, every apparent virtue a mask worn for strategic advantage. Xenophon treats him with barely concealed contempt, and the fate he records carries the weight of a moral verdict: while the other generals were swiftly beheaded, Menon was held by the Persians for a full year and subjected to sustained torture before dying what Xenophon pointedly calls the death of a felon. The Persians evidently found him useful enough as an informant to keep alive, which is itself a final commentary on his character — he was the man others used because everyone understood he could be bought. The New Testament names the root of Menon's ruin with surgical precision. First Timothy 6:10 declares that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and Menon's life is a sustained illustration of that root producing every variety of its fruit: fraud, betrayal, the exploitation of trust, the corruption of those under his authority, and a death that reflected the quality of the life that preceded it. Galatians 6:7-8 supplies the framework: a man reaps what he sows, and Menon had sown so thoroughly to the flesh that his harvest was complete. He is also the figure in the Anabasis most like Judas — not in circumstance but in the structure of his soul. Both men made self-interest the organizing principle of every relationship, and both discovered that a life built on that principle ultimately devours itself.

The Leader Who Bore What Others Would Not: Xenophon

Against the four failed or broken commanders, Xenophon presents himself — with the careful indirection of third-person narration — as the embodiment of what the Socratic tradition considered ideal leadership: transparent, pious, selfless, and psychologically perceptive in crisis. He rose to lead after the generals' murders not because he had been appointed but because the situation required someone who could speak to ten thousand frightened men in the middle of the night and give them a reason to live until morning. He did this through rhetoric grounded in genuine conviction rather than manipulation, calling the army to remember that they still had what no enemy had taken from them: their character and their capacity for disciplined action. When the army was freezing in the mountains and the men were giving up, Xenophon stepped out of his tent, removed his cloak, and began splitting wood in the snow. No order was needed after that. When he was later accused by some soldiers of excessive harshness in discipline, he answered the charges openly and called his accusers to produce their evidence — a willingness to be held accountable that neither Clearchus nor Menon would have recognized as a virtue. When the opportunity arose to allow his troops to plunder the Greek city of Byzantium, he refused, choosing moral principle over the immediate gratitude of an army that had endured months of hardship and felt entitled to compensation. He eventually led the Ten Thousand home, all fifteen hundred miles of hostile territory, and settled in Scillus on an estate given to him by the Spartans, where he spent the rest of his life writing. Xenophon's portrait in the Anabasis parallels the servant leadership of Nehemiah more closely than any other figure in the Old Testament. Nehemiah worked alongside the laborers rebuilding Jerusalem's walls, organized both prayer and military defense simultaneously, refused to use his position to extract food and payment from the already-burdened people, and answered opposition with transparency rather than evasion. Both men led by shared toil rather than exempted rank, and both found that this approach generated a loyalty that fear-based authority could never sustain. Yet the New Testament presses deeper than Xenophon's Socratic framework can reach. The foot-washing in John 13 is not a leadership technique; it is a revelation of what God looks like when he enters the room. Christ does not merely demonstrate servant leadership as an effective strategy — he enacts it as the very logic of love descending into human need. Xenophon's self-giving cost him comfort and political capital. Christ's self-giving cost him everything, and it was not offered as an example to admire but as a ransom to receive.

What Christ Reveals That Xenophon Could Not See

Xenophon saw clearly that character determines destiny. What he could not see — what no pagan philosopher, however perceptive, could see without revelation — is the source and remedy of the character failures he so precisely diagnosed. The New Testament names what Xenophon observed but could not fully explain. When Jesus redefines leadership in Mark 10:42-45, he does not merely recommend servant leadership as a more effective strategy; he roots it in his own self-giving: the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. The humility that Xenophon demonstrates by splitting wood in a blizzard, Christ embodies not as a technique but as the shape of divine love descending into human need. Paul's account of Christ in Philippians 2:5-8 presents one who, though existing in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and became obedient even to death. This is not a better version of Xenophon's servant leadership. It is a different category entirely — leadership that is redemptive rather than merely admirable. And here is the place where the Anabasis, read through the lens of the New Testament, becomes more than a leadership manual: it becomes a mirror in which you can see your own heart. Menon's greed, Clearchus's cruelty, Cyrus's deception, Proxenus's insufficient goodness — these are not exotic ancient failures. They are the failure modes of every human heart that has not been remade.

The Character You Cannot Build Without Christ

The deepest lesson of the Anabasis is also its most sobering: character is not primarily a product of education, discipline, or good intentions. Proxenus had the finest rhetorical training Gorgias could provide. Cyrus had every advantage of birth, ability, and opportunity. Neither possessed what their situations ultimately required, and no amount of additional training would have supplied what was missing at the level of the soul. This is the point at which Xenophon's wisdom, honest and penetrating as it is, reaches its limit. He can diagnose the failure; he cannot prescribe the cure. The Christian reader knows the cure by name. Transformation of character at the depth the Anabasis reveals to be necessary — reaching not just conduct but motive, not just action but desire — is the work of the Holy Spirit, who produces in those united to Christ by faith the love, patience, kindness, and self-control that Clearchus despised, Menon suppressed, and Proxenus possessed in sentiment without strength. The gospel does not merely instruct you to be different. It joins you to the One whose death absorbed the penalty of your pride, greed, and cruelty, and whose resurrection is the living source of a character being genuinely renewed from the inside. If you have approached the Christian life as a program of moral self-improvement rather than a death and resurrection, the Anabasis is a mirror worth holding still. Look at Menon and ask whether greed is truly absent from your motives. Look at Clearchus and ask whether fear is the primary instrument in your relationships. Look at Proxenus and ask whether you have confused feeling good about people with actually knowing how to help them. Then look at Christ, who descended not merely to diagnose your failures but to bear them, and who calls you now not to try harder but to come.

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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

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

Summon Your Strengths

II. Summon Your Strengths
“Often the best things in life do not come naturally. Therefore, you should boldly decide what you want to do, why it’s important, and whatever you have the will to persevere. Next, figure out what strengths you have or might be able to develop—from scratch, if necessary—to make it happen. Then you need to try, struggle, fail, and fail again, until you get the results that you’re after. From that experience of learning to smelt the primary elements—skill and will—your strengths will emerge. Let adversity be the flame in which your strengths are forged.”
“But regardless of how many strengths you can build and use effectively, it’s almost impossible to achieve greatness alone. Linking with the right people can elevate the breadth and scope of your impact.”
A. Strength Formula
1. Adversity Tools
a) Skills, Talents, and Strengths
(1) Skills: Those things you are relatively good at, whether innate or learned
(2) Talents: Skills that you have a natural ability to do well.
(3) Strengths: An extremely valuable or useful ability, asset or quality (They are greater and deeper than skills and are more overarching).
b) Will
“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” Mahatma Gandhi
“When it comes to doing anything worthwhile, if you don’t have the will, you won’t.”
(1) Will is made up of determination, desire, decisiveness and effort.
(2) Will + Skill = Strengths
c) The Why
“He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.” Friedrich Nietzsche
(1) It is not enough to have high aspirations; you must have a compelling reason for that aspiration.
2. Your Summit Strengths
a) What do I want to do?
b) Why do I want to do it?
c) What is the most significant adversity or obstacle I will face as I attempt to do it?
d) What strengths do I have, and which strengths do I need to forge, to make it happen?
e) Summit Strengths Checklist
(1) Summit Challenge:
(2) Why:
(3) Sills:
(4) Strengths:
(5) Summit Adversity:
(6) Skills:
(7) Strengths:
(8) Adversity Strength Strategy:
3. Adversity Strengths versus Regular Strengths
“What matters most is not who you are or what you bring forth when all is right, but rather who you are and what you bring forth when something goes wrong.”
“Summon your strengths when adversity strikes and its countless advantages are yours to harvest.”
a) Regular Strengths: Those qualities you regularly demonstrate under calm, normal conditions.
b) Adversity Strengths: Those strengths that you summon when adversity strikes, when you are under the gun or feeling the pressure or when things go wrong.
c) Integrity is being whole or complete so that you are the same under adversity as you are under calm and normal conditions.
d) Strength Sorter:
(1) What are your Regular Strengths?
(2) What are your Adversity Strengths?
(3) How do the two lists compare? How much overlap is there?
(4) What is the one Regular Strength you are most compelled to turn into an Adversity Strength?
(5) Adversity Gap Strategy: How will you do it?
(6) Areas of Strengths:
(a) Relationships
(b) Creativity
(c) Attitude/Outlook
(d) Virtues
(e) Thinking
(f) Physical
(g) Spiritual
(h) Other
4. The Team Advantage
It is not enough to forge your own Adversity Strengths, but you must also forge the Team’s Adversity Strengths if you are to achieve greatness
a) The A Factor—Adversity: How does each team member perform and what strengths does each bring forth while under adversity?
b) Assessing Adversity Strengths of your team
(1) Step One: Rate each team member (1 to 10) on how he demonstrates each strength under normal circumstances.
(2) Step Two: Rate each team member (1 to 10) on how he demonstrates each strength under adversity or pressure.
(3) Step Three: Address these questions:
(a) Of this entire list, what Adversity Strength does each person need to develop? Why?
(b) What are the things the person tends to do best when under real, even chronic, pressure and stress?
(c) What have other people commented on or noticed about the person’s behavior when he or she is facing adversity? What are the common themes?
c) Blind Spots
(1) We all are blind to our weaknesses and strengths, failing to see our true potential. Some overestimate their Adversity Strengths while many underestimate them.
(2) When adversity strikes, strengthen your position by:
(a) Gaining utter clarity and being brutally honest about your own A Factor
(b) Helping others to shed light on theirs
(c) Working to develop the Adversity Strengths you need as a team
d) The W Factor—Why
“People will rarely exceed their why.”
(1) Keep asking candidates why they want to be a part of your team until the truest, deepest reason is exposed.
e) The E Factor—Ego
(1) Ego is your idea of your own importance or worth.
(2) What is the relationship between your self-perception and your actual strengths and contribution?
(3) It is vital to success to have a strong sense of one’s true strengths, abilities and worth.
(4) A strong self image is essential to take full advantage of adversities from which others back down.


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

Take Adversity Head On!

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

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

Man's Finest Hour

“I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, his greatest fulfillment of all he holds dear, is the moment when he ahs worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle—victorious.”

Vince Lombardi

Vision, Discipline, Passion and Conscience

Express Your Voice: Vision, Discipline, Passion and Conscience (64-93)

“More powerful is he who has himself in his power.” Lucius Amaeus Seneca

The highest expression of the four intelligences: (65-66)

Mental: Vision
Seeing with the mind’s eye what is possible in people, projects, and enterprises that comes when our mind joins need with possibility. When there is no vision, people fall into victimism.

Physical: Discipline
Discipline is paying the price to bring the vision into reality and comes when vision is joined to commitment. When discipline is absent people fall into indulgence, sacrificing what matters most for the pleasure or thrill of the moment.

Emotional: Passion
Passion is the fire, the desire, the strength of conviction and the drive that sustains the discipline to achieve the vision, and it arises when need overlaps with talent. When passion is missing people fall into insecurity and the empty chatter of the social mirror.

Spiritual: Conscience
Conscience is the inward moral sense of what is right and wrong and the drive toward meaning and contribution, and is the guiding force to vision, discipline and passion. When conscience is absent people are dominated by ego.

“Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, takes off your relish of spiritual things, whatever increases the authority of the body over the mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may seem in itself.” Susana Wesley

From The 8th Habit by Stephen R. Covey

Gridiron Gang

I enjoyed the movie Gridiron Gang, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. I thought the production was second-rate but the story was inspiring. The acting wasn’t topnotch, since most of the actors were unknowns. While I have a lot of respect for the Rock and enjoy his movies, I must admit that he is not a great actor. The movie lacked the emotional punch of other similar movies, such as Remember the Titans, where racial tensions had to be surmounted in much the same way that gang rivalries had to be transcended in Gridiron Gang. Much more could have been done with this movie to make it a top-notch production that would have more effectively promoted its inspiring message.

I was inspired by the story mainly because it was based on true events. I admire the compassion and tenacity of Sean Porter, the main character, who sacrifices and innovates to help gang members in juvenile prison develop the character and attitudes necessary to escape the dead end lifestyle of the inner city gangs.

To be honest, I was moved emotionally more by the clips at the end showing the real life people portrayed in the movie. Their comments were more powerful than the movie was. It would have been better to have watched 15 minutes of these clips than watching the movie. The real Sean Porter was much more dynamic than The Rock was able to portray him. And the young men were able to communicate the transformation that had taken place in their lives because of Sean’s tough love.

I hope that more people realize that the present system isn’t working and use this model as inspiration for creating more effective alternatives to our juvenile justice system. It would also be valuable for anyone who works with youth to inspire them to come up with more effective methods of instilling values and character.