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The Adversity Advantage: Seven Steps Toward Everyday Greatness

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Overview

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 and challenges, even tragedies. But merely coping with or overcoming adversity barely keeps you in the game. The key to success, both in business and in life, is learning how to become an alchemist and convert any adversity, major or minor, into a genuine advantage. The Adversity Advantage offers proven principles and practical tools that teach you how to use adversity as a force for superior achievement, resilience, agility, innovation, energy, and happiness.

Stoltz and Weihenmayer posit that any individual or enterprise can use adversity to power their ultimate success. Stoltz has spent decades decoding the human relationship with adversity and is the creator of the globally acclaimed Adversity Quotient(r). His AQ(r) theory -- the most widely used method in the world for measuring and strengthening how we deal with adversity -- forms the foundation of this book. Weihenmayer is the exemplar of Stoltz's work and the seven principles taught in this book. He has triumphed over and gleaned tremendous advantage from seemingly insurmountable adversities, becoming the only blind man in history to reach the Seven Summits, the tallest peak on every continent, including Everest. These two adversity experts have married their dream-team combination of practical science and unmatched experience to develop seven guiding principles to teach you how to transform adversity into your most powerful advantage.

The Adversity Advantage blends Stoltz's proven leadership techniques and groundbreaking research with Erik's soul-stirring real-world anecdotes and wisdom. It will rewire your core response mechanisms to react optimally to anything that happens, the moment it strikes. You will move past avoiding or simply coping with adversity to harness its true power. Learn to pinpoint and grow your adversity strengths to bring out your best when you need it most, under pressure. Use adversity to pioneer new possibilities in your work and life.

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Author Information

Bio of Paul G. Stoltz

Paul G. Stoltz, Ph.D., founded and has been the CEO of PEAK Learning since 1987, a global research and consulting firm, and the director of the Global Resilience Project, working with top leaders and organizations worldwide. The originator of the globally acclaimed AQ (Adversity Quotient) method and author of the international bestsellers The Adversity Quotient and Adversity Quotient at Work, he resides with his family in San Luis Obispo, California.

Bio of Erik Weihenmayer

Erik Weihenmayer is the world's leading blind athlete and the only blind person in history to reach the Seven Summits, including Everest. Erik inspires millions of people each year through his climbing expeditions, nonprofit outreach, and keynote presentations. He is author of Touch the Top of the World, which was made into a TV movie, and subject of the award-winning documentary Farther Than the Eye Can See. Erik has been featured on the cover of Time and lives with his family in Golden, Colorado.

Bio of Stephen R. Covey

Stephen R. Covey is a renowned authority on leadership, a family expert, teacher, organizational consultant, and vice chairman of FranklinCovey Co. The author of several acclaimed books, he has also received numerous honors and awards, including being named one of Time magazine's twenty-five most influential Americans. Covey lives with his wife, Sandra, and their family in the Rocky Mountains of Utah.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Fireside

Filesize

2.24 MB

Number of Pages

304

eBook ISBN

0743299310

Excerpt from: The Adversity Advantage by Paul G. Stoltz

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 central strand of our story, shared across eras and cultures, but we also read about it in all the great books, are spellbound by it in popular movies, and wrestle with it in our own lives every day. 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 nurture 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 my 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 on me with such force, such viciousness, that I thought I'd be crushed by it.
Late that fall, I was watching a TV show called That's Incredible. I could still see a little out of one eye, though I had to crane forward to just a few inches away from the set. Being featured that night was 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 and with tears pouring down my face, I watched Terry run. 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.
What struck me most was the look on his face. 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 image 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 unequipped, the fierce wind, the frigid cold, the steep and technical terrain will do him in every time. Likewise, in order to consistently convert everyday adversity, big and small, into genuine advantage in our lives and enterprises we need some 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.
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 our capacity to deal with adversity. Decoding the human relationship with adversity has been and continues to be Paul's lifework.
It was through Paul's groundbreaking research that we met.