The Advantages of Adversity

by Mark S. Fulton

One of my favorite movies is “Rob Roy.” The film is based on the life of Robert Roy MacGregor, a 17th century Scottish clan leader who was a hero to some and an outlaw to others. Over the course of two hours, Liam Neesan as Rob Roy suffers an incredible series of misfortunes: Money he has borrowed is stolen, his best friend is murdered, his home and livestock are destroyed, his wife is raped, his brother is killed and he is arrested as a thief and tortured. And you think you have problems!

It is Rob Roy’s response to adversity that fuels the drama of the film. Through sheer courage and perseverance, Rob confronts the perpetrators of his misery and rights the wrongs that were done to him. Refusing to compromise his integrity, he steadfastly pursues justice, even when his adversaries offer him an easy albeit unethical way out of his troubles. Through it all, Rob exhibits extraordinary quality of character, which ultimately leads to an even higher position of leadership.

In addition to the great sword fights and other moments of mayhem, I really liked the message of this movie: Adversity will either break you or make you stronger. While you may not be experiencing ordeals that would put you in Rob Roy’s company, the adversities in your life still have the potential to either reduce you to a demoralized dud or induce you to achieve new levels of personal excellence. The choice is yours.

Not every tribulation in life qualifies as adversity. Having a bad hair day, finding someone else’s car in your parking space, running out of coffee creamer at the office —these don’t qualify as disasters. True adversity is a conflict, hardship, affliction or crisis that tests your fortitude or challenges your integrity. It threatens something deeply important to you and places you in a position of choosing actions that could significantly affect your future.

As harsh and stressful as adversity can be, it can serve as a valuable teacher. If you will learn its lessons and accepts it disciplines, you’ll find adversity can be instrumental in shaping your self-image, your priorities and your current and future relationships. Adversity can help you:

• Discover yourself - We all have a reservoir of courage and character that lies at the center of our being. Like Jules Verne’s intrepid explorers in “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” sometimes you must navigate a course through trying circumstances and daunting obstacles in order to reach that storehouse of strength. Someone once said, “Adversity introduces a man to himself.” That moment of discovery is both instructive and exhilarating.

• Focus on the important - Nothing will get you into trouble faster than comfort. And nothing will concentrate your attention on the truly significant things in your life like hard times. It’s so easy to become complacent in your job when things are going well. But when adversity comes crashing into your workaday world, the superficial stuff quickly falls away as you hunker down to do battle with the invading giants. Adversity forces you to zero in on what is truly vital and tune out what isn’t.

• Move forward - I’ve learned a lot about sailing from my friend Arthur. Foremost among his many explanations of nautical principles is how wind that is blowing directly in your face can move your boat forward. An able seaman can trim his sails and turn an adverse wind into a powerful force that propels him toward his destination. Likewise, by adjusting your attitude toward a troubling situation, you can often transform an adversity into an advantage.

• Sift your friendships - In times of adversity you learn the true power and unfortunate fickleness of friendship. You find out in a hurry who cares about you and who cares about merely counting you among his or her cohorts. William Shakespeare observed, “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” Sometimes you discover new friends and allies when troubles abound. Likewise, adversity in the lives of others reveals to us what kind of friends we are. Do you find time to comfort and encourage your friends during their darkest hours? Or do you have more pressing obligations?

In case you’re wondering how well you cope with adversity, there’s actually a way to measure your proclivity to persevere when the going gets rough. Peak Learning, a California consulting company, has developed a personal survey that will determine your AQ—your adversity quotient.

According to the folks at Peak Learning, your AQ is more important to your success than either your IQ or your EQ (emotional quotient). They claim that people with higher AQs can out-perform, out-persist, out-create and out pace those with lower AQs. Peak Learning says people with high AQs consistently:

• Are elected and selected as leaders
• Out-sell people with low AQs by 90-320%
• Out-perform athletes with low AQs
• Are three times less likely to quit than employees with low AQs
• Out-perform managers with low AQs
• Learn faster and apply a higher proportion of skills training
• Are superior problem solvers
• Attract other high AQ top performers

Should we go looking for trouble? In a sense, yes. Too much ease is a deadly drug that numbs our sense of adventure and lulls us into laxity. The rude awakening comes when we find that we haven’t contributed anything of worth to our company in some time because we’ve been too comfortable.

Without a mountain to climb, a dragon to slay or a storm to weather, we can easily loose our edge and drift into insignificance. Just think, if it hadn’t been for his ordeals, Rob Roy would never have become a hero to his people—or made it to the silver screen.

Copyright 2000 © Mark S. Fulton