The Adversity Advantage: Turning Everyday Struggles into Everyday Greatness

THEADVERSITY ADVANTAGE

Turn daily setbacks and major challenges into key components of success!

Adversity is one of the most potent forces in life. It shapes your character, clarifies your priorities, and defines your path. It can also fuel your greatness. Each of us faces a rich assortment of adversities every day, ranging from minor hassles to major setbacks, even tragedies. The path to success, both in business and in life, is learning how to convert any adversity into a genuine advantage.

Nobody knows this better than blind adventurer Erik Weihenmayer and adversity expert Dr. Paul Stoltz. This dream-team combination will help you totally rethink your relationship with adversity, teaching how to use it to pioneer new possibilities at work and in your personal life.

This new, deluxe edition of The Adversity Advantage offers valuable lessons based upon incredible adventures, seemingly insurmountable challenges, and extensive research. These seven original principles will help you harness the adversity in your life and turn it into power, innovation, energy, and happiness:

• Take It On!

• Summon Your Strengths

• Engage your CORE: Control, Ownership, Reach, and Endurance

• Pioneer Possibilities

• Pack Light, Pack Right

• Suffer Well

• Deliver Greatness, Every Day

Let The Adversity Advantage inspire you to take on the most daunting obstacles!

Paul G. Stoltz, Ph.D., has spent decades decoding the human relationship with adversity and is the creator of the globally acclaimed Adversity Quotient®.

Erik Weihenmayer is the exemplar of the principles in The Adversity Advantage: He is the only blind person in history to climb the tallest peak on every continent, including Mount Everest.

"This book is filled with tools, principles, and challenges that are both practical and compelling. I found that reading The Adversity Advantage led me to look carefully at how my life challenges can be the very fuel that enables me to swim against the stream, against cultural currents, against all forms of adversity inherent in my most important goals."

—From the Foreword by Stephen R. Covey, Ph.D.,

author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

"The Adversity Advantage encouraged our team to walk into the midst of the current economic adversity with optimism and look for the new opportunities that these times bring. All of our top executives have read this book—it has been an inspiration and has truly made a difference."

—Al Carey, president and CEO, Frito-Lay North America

COVER DESIGN BY LAURA SOLES • COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY DIDRIK JOHNCK

Touchstone

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Copyright © 2006, 2010 by Paul G. Stoltz and Erik Weihenmayer

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

This Touchstone trade paperback edition August 2010

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stoltz, Paul Gordon.

The adversity advantage : turning everyday struggles into everyday greatness : updated with new stories from the seven summits and expedition photographs / by Paul G. Stoltz & Erik Weihenmayer. − Deluxe ed.

p.    cm.

Includes index.

1. Success—Psychological aspects. 2. Self-management (Psychology)

I. Weihenmayer, Erik. II. Title.

BF637.S8S694 2010

158.1—dc22

2010021697

ISBN 978-1-4391-9949-7

           ISBN 978-0-7432-9931-2 (ebook)

We dedicate this book to my beloved brother, Mark Weihenmayer (1959–2006), and to those like Mark who face adversity every day, yearning for the tools to emerge stronger and better. May adversity become the pathway through which you flourish. Your greatness is needed.

—ERIK WEIHENMAYER

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Contents

Foreword by Stephen R. Covey

Introduction

Summit One: Take It On!

Summit Two: Summon Your Strengths

Summit Three: Engage Your CORE

Summit Four: Pioneer Possibilities

Summit Five: Pack Light, Pack Right

Summit Six: Suffer Well

Summit Seven: Deliver Greatness, Every Day

Acknowledgments

Index

Foreword

STEPHEN R. COVEY

Many years ago, I was wandering around the stacks of a library and a book by Dr. Viktor Frankl caught my attention. What I read was so inspiring, so compelling, and so profound that it changed my life. I memorized these three sentences:

Between stimulus and response, there is a space.

In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response.

In those choices lie our growth and our happiness.

Think about it—between the time that whatever has happened to you, or is now happening to you, and your response to that event, there is a moment in which you have the power and freedom to choose your response. Those chosen responses will govern your growth and your happiness. In fact, they will govern your achievements and your contributions.

In other words, we are not merely a product of our genetics, our conditioning, or our present circumstances. The Adversity Advantage is an in-depth exploration of the principle behind these three sentences that have had such a deep impact upon me.

This is not a theoretical book, even though there is extensive theorizing, nor is this a book full of abstract idealism, even though it shows how the ideal can become real. Instead, The Adversity Advantage is the synergistic product of two marvelous individuals who teamed up to share what they have learned from their respective experiences: Erik from the unique perspective of being the only blind person to climb the highest peak on the seven continents of the world, Paul from his life’s work decoding and strengthening the human relationship with adversity. Their collaboration was much like an Everest climb—a grueling ascent through innumerable obstacles, culminating in this powerful message from the top of the world. Erik brought his insights from the mountains; Paul added his hard-won knowledge and helped Erik shape all those insights into a lesson plan for readers to help them achieve everyday greatness.

Not all greatness is the same. Primary greatness lies in character and in contribution. Secondary greatness is found in prestige, wealth, position, and the kinds of achievements that make no solid, lasting contribution to others. All of us want our children and grandchildren to develop primary greatness. They may also attain secondary greatness. But seldom do people achieve both. A few celebrities do, but most celebrities only achieve secondary greatness. Many everyday people achieve primary greatness, particularly parents who raise children of character and contribution.

There is one common trait found in all greatness: how people use the space between stimulus and response. In short, how do people deal with adversity, with setbacks, with suffering, heartache, disappointment, and injustice? Do they become victims, consumed by the metastasizing cancers of cynicism, criticizing, complaining, comparing, competing, and contending? Or do they learn to harness the power, energy, and wisdom embodied in the difficult moment?

How ironic that what enables us to grow and experience true joy in life is the very thing most people spend most of their lives trying to avoid. A life of convenience and comfort and pleasure is the path of least resistance and contributes nothing. I take as a mantra for life: grow or die. Keep learning and contributing . . . or die. I believe this is true, not just symbolically, but literally. When we stop growing and learning, we wither.

In his bestselling book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Dr. Frankl helps others find meaning in their suffering, no matter how severe. He explains that someone who has a why can live with any what and any how. His concept of dealing with adversity and achieving a deeper sense of purpose resonates in this book.

The remarkable thing about The Adversity Advantage is how applicable it is to every facet of life—physical, mental, social, emotional, economic, and spiritual. Want to make a real contribution? Pay the price. Invest yourself in a cause. Swim upstream against the cultural currents. Fight convention. Want to live a healthy, long life? Train smart. Stress your body, but don’t overstress it. Participate in aerobics, strength training, and flexibility exercises. Eat wisely. Want to improve your relationships? See love as a verb, rather than as a feeling. Stop criticizing, finding fault, and blaming; instead serve, listen, and anticipate.

Businesspeople, do you want more customers? Give that extra mile of service. Go beyond what others do. Look on your customers’ difficulties and problems, their adversities, as an opportunity where you can go way beyond what is normally expected. You’ll get these customers for life.

Want to build a strong, trusting, highly productive culture in your organization with everyone focused on second-mile service? Use the adversity advantage. Get to know your people, listen to them, and understand their pains, their hopes, their desires, their problems, and their self-doubts. Be true to your team behind their backs when the easier way would be to join in with others in criticizing. If you are critical by nature, then learn to give them positive feedback. This will take courage, particularly if you do it in a humble—not an arrogant—way.

Want to grow spiritually? Let service be your mantra. Never retire from meaningful work or projects. Where much is given, much is acquired. This kind of service will mean dealing with adversity on a daily basis, but as explained here, you’ll learn to take on these challenges, summon your strengths, engage your CORE, and pioneer possibilities. You’ll learn to pack light and right, suffer well, and then deliver this kind of great service on a consistent, regular basis.

The powerful principles in this book represent the tallest mountains on the seven continents of the world. They are presented inductively so that you can earn the insights, not just learn them. Inductive thinking means moving from the specific to the general. Deductive means that you start with theory (general) and then begin to apply it to specific situations.

In The Adversity Advantage, each chapter, or Summit, starts with the specifics: a story about Erik’s mountain experiences. Then the reader proceeds to general concepts offered by Dr. Paul Stoltz, who developed the Adversity Quotient—the most widely accepted method for assessing and strengthening our ability to deal with adversity. Over half a million people have measured their Adversity Quotient, or AQ, and begun the journey of strengthening how they deal with adversity. Dr. Stoltz has conducted groundbreaking research in nearly two dozen countries to gain an understanding of those rare people who don’t merely deal well with adversity, but convert it into fuel to achieve greatness.

This book is filled with tools, principles, and challenges that are both practical and compelling. I found that reading The Adversity Advantage led me to look carefully at how my life challenges can be the very fuel that enables me to swim against the stream, against cultural currents, against all forms of adversity inherent in my most important goals.

Setbacks are inevitable, but misery is a choice.

The Adversity Advantage can help equip you to harness and utilize the hard moments to achieve the greatest heights of growth and contribution. That’s where true happiness is found. This book gave me a real appreciation for adversity and helped me see greater possibilities. It has inspired me to be an alchemist, to turn lead into gold.

This is not a book you just quickly skim to get the main points. You have to earn those points by working with the knowledge and trying to internalize it. One of the best ways to learn this material is to teach the essence of the seven steps to your loved ones and others who might be interested.

I often ask audiences, How many of you have achieved your present level of success, whatever it may be, partly or largely because someone believed in you when you didn’t believe in yourself? Usually about two-thirds of the audience members will raise their hands, and when you listen to some of them, you see tears shed by both speakers and listeners.

After a lifetime of tackling adversity head-on, and achieving greater successes than many sighted people, Erik sums up his insights: I believe that inside each of us is something I can only describe as a light, which has the capacity to feed on adversity, to consume it like fuel. When we tap into that light, every frustration, every setback, every obstacle becomes a source to power our lives forward. The greater the challenge, the brighter the light burns. Through it, we become more focused, more creative, and more driven, and can even learn to transcend our own perceived limitations to bring our lives more meaning.

Between adversity and our response is a space. In that space are the power and freedom to choose to crumble, or to elevate both ourselves and others, as these two authors do by sharing their work with us. Dear reader, pay the price with this book. The dividends will be abundant and will last forever.

Stephen R. Covey is the author of the bestselling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. His other books include First Things First, Principle-Centered Leadership, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, The 8th Habit, and The Leader in Me—How Schools and Parents Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness, One Child at a Time.

Introduction

ROUTE DESCRIPTION

Quitters, Campers, and Climbers

The Seven Summits of Adversity

The Mountain Metaphor

Life Is Not Fair. Next?

Erik and Paul both contribute to this book, so their passages are differentiated by the use of a different typeface for each voice. This is Erik’s text.

What if, as a result of completing this book, you could use any, and I mean any, adversity to your advantage? What if you could convert your everyday struggles, big and small, into the kind of fuel that powers you past everyday normality to everyday greatness?

Isn’t there something incredibly riveting about the human struggle with adversity? Not only is it the thread strand of our story, shared across eras and cultures, but we also read about it in all of the great books, are spellbound by it in popular movies, and wrestle with it in our own lives every day. But why adversity?

Maybe it’s because within that struggle lies the essential wisdom we all need to become the kind of person we hope to be, or to grow the kind of team or organization we envision. In fact, after spending the past few years working on this book, I’m convinced that adversity holds the key to achieving everyday greatness in life, business, and society.

We don’t have to go looking for adversity. It tends to find us. During the summer between eighth and ninth grades, I began losing the last traces of sight. I could no longer see enough to walk around by myself, so my brothers and parents had to lead me. I’d reach out for their shirtsleeves with the terror of a small child being left behind in a department store. I hated what was happening because it represented utter helplessness. Everything I knew was ending. The loss was like a storm descending upon me with such force, such viciousness, that I thought I’d be crushed by it.

Late that fall, I was watching the TV show That’s Incredible. I could still see a little out of one eye, though I had to crane forward just a few inches away from the television. The feature story that night was about an athlete named Terry Fox. Terry had lost a leg to cancer and, when not yet discharged from the hospital, made a decision to run across Canada from east to west. With my nose pressed up against the screen, I watched Terry run—tears poured down my face. The miles took a tremendous toll on his amputated leg and its primitive prosthetic. He hobbled along, mile after mile, fighting the pain of blisters and raw skin, often using a pair of crutches to propel his body forward.

The look on his face struck me most. It was a look of extreme contradiction: full of exhaustion, yet radiant with exaltation. In his thin face was the trace flicker of an intense internal light that burned power into his struggling frame. The images filled my sagging spirit and gave me a feeling of utter courage. Many would have retreated from such hardship, but—surprisingly—Terry faced it head-on and literally ran into its midst. It was while staring into Terry’s face that I first wondered how we could harness that great storm of adversity swirling around us and use its power to make ourselves stronger and better.

Although I was inspired by Terry, I learned early on that inspiration is not enough. If a person embarks on a mountain expedition unprepared and poorly equipped, the fierce wind, the frigid cold, and the steep terrain will do him in every time. Likewise, to consistently convert everyday adversity, big and small, into genuine advantage in our lives and enterprises we need powerful and proven tools. And no one is better qualified to teach us about those tools than the guy I teamed up with to write this book, Dr. Paul Stoltz.

PHOTOGRAPH BY CP PHOTO

My hero, Terry Fox, had his right leg amputated due to bone cancer when he was eighteen years old, and while in the hospital, was so affected by the other children with cancer that he decided to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. One of my last visual memories before going blind was Terry’s face on a TV show, full of exhaustion yet radiant with exaltation, during his historic run. He made it 143 days and over 3,000 miles before he was forced to stop when the cancer reappeared in his lungs. He died in 1981 at just twenty-two, but his vision continues through dozens of annual Terry Fox Runs around the world.

Paul is perhaps best known for his Adversity Quotient, or AQ theory, which has become the most widely adopted method in the world for measuring and strengthening how we deal with adversity. Decoding the human relationship with adversity has been and continues to be Paul’s life’s work.

It was through Paul’s groundbreaking research that we met. His focus on people who harness life’s tough stuff led him to launch the Global Resilience Project, an effort now involving studies in twenty-one countries. His quest is to gain a better understanding of those rare people who don’t just cope with adversity, but who learn to convert it into fuel to achieve everyday greatness.

I believe that inside each of us is something I can only describe as a light, which has the capacity to feed on adversity, to consume it like fuel. When we tap into that light, every frustration, every setback, every obstacle becomes a source to power our lives forward. The greater the challenge, the brighter the light burns. Through it, we become more focused, more creative, more driven, and can even learn to transcend our own perceived limitations to bring our lives more meaning.

You might remember, from your history textbooks, those medieval alchemists who toiled to mysteriously turn lead into gold. No one has yet figured out how to chemically transmute one metal into another but, on a figurative level, some people have successfully turned their trials and tribulations into priceless experiences. I call people like Terry, the people Paul has highlighted from his research, modern-day alchemists. All of us can be alchemists, taking the lead that life piles on top of us and finding ways to transform it into gold. I strive to be an alchemist every day. I climbed the Seven Summits—the tallest peaks on each of the seven continents—not only because I love to climb but also to shatter people’s perceptions of what is possible. And somewhere along the way, I learned more about the advantages of