Does Adversity Build Character?

But what about the notion that adversity builds character? How does that idea stand up under closer scrutiny?

In an article in Inc. magazine, Jim Haudan calls adversity ‘the fuel of greatness.’ He goes on to say: ‘Adversity is one of the most powerful forces in life. It can bring out your best or your worst. Ultimately, it is up to you. Overcoming adversity is character building. It shapes us into who we are and who we will become. It creates the confidence to overcome and the learning mechanisms to deal with the things that don’t go our way.’

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people around the world are facing adversity of a kind most never expected to suffer from a terrible disease. Many are rising to the challenge and making the hard adjustments and sacrifices needed in their daily lives to help bring down the infection rate and ultimately beat the novel coronavirus.

However, the current situation is not a case of one person fighting through adversity and overcoming it; it’s a case of millions of individuals struggling and pulling together for a common cause. Situations like this are scarce in the history of the world, and thankfully so. Outside of virus outbreaks such as Ebola and SARS, we usually have to look at major worldwide events where millions have to do their parts, such as during World War II.

So let’s assume that during COVID-19, you are doing everything expected of you to help overcome the collective adversity in front of us. Now let’s turn our attention to more normal life situations in which a person may encounter difficulty and have to deal with it as best as they can. It might be helpful to look at several examples of famous people who rose above personal adversity and conquered it to, as Mr. Haudan puts it, fuel their greatness. Joshua Spodek, of Inc. magazine, put together the following list:

Franklin Roosevelt

Four-time President of the United States. Paralyzed from the waist down by polio before running for office.

Oprah Winfrey

“Winfrey is best known for her multi-award-winning talk show “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” which was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. She has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and was for a time the world’s only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world. Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, saying she was raped at age nine and became pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy.”

Sylvester Stallone

“Iconic actor, one of most successful actors, wrote and starred in three-Oscar-winning (ten nominations) Rocky, which became a franchise; starred as iconic John Rambo; got steps of Philadelphia Art Museum named after him. Complications his mother suffered during labor forced her obstetricians to use two pairs of forceps during his birth; misuse of these accidentally severed a nerve and caused paralysis in parts of Stallone’s face. As a result, the lower left side of his face is paralyzed — including parts of his lip, tongue, and chin — an accident which has given Stallone his snarling look and slightly slurred speech.”

Tom Cruise

“Nominated for three Academy Awards and has won three Golden Globe Awards; As of 2012, Cruise is Hollywood’s highest-paid actor. Fourteen of his films grossed over $100 million domestically; twenty have grossed more than $200 million worldwide. He grew up in near poverty. The family was dominated by his abusive father, whom Cruise has described as “a merchant of chaos.” Cruise said his father beat him and was a bully and coward: “He was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a great lesson in my life — how he’d lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang! For me, it was like, ‘There’s something wrong with this guy. Don’t trust him. Be careful around him.” Tom is 5 feet, 7 inches tall (170 cm).”

Frederick Douglass

“Leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing. He stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders’ arguments that slaves did not have the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Many Northerners also found it hard to believe that such a great orator had been a slave. Born into slavery, violence, and separated from his parents, he taught himself to read.”

Johnny Depp

“Films featuring Depp have grossed over $3.1 billion at the United States box office and over $7.6 billion worldwide. He has been nominated for top awards many times, winning the Best Actor Awards from the Golden Globes. He also has garnered a sex symbol status in American cinema, being twice named as the “Sexiest Man Alive” by People magazine in 2003 and 2009. He has been listed in the 2012 Guinness Book of World Records as the highest-paid actor, with $75 million. Depp’s family lived in over 20 locations, settling in Miramar, Fla., when Depp was 7, living in a hotel until his father found work. Prone to self-inflicted knife wounds, Depp started smoking at 12, lost his virginity at 13, started doing drugs at 14 and eventually dropped out of high school at 16; worked as a telemarketer.”

Albert Einstein

“Nobel Prize-winning physicist, created special and general relativity, a major contributor to quantum mechanics, statesman. His great intellectual achievements and originality have made the word “Einstein” synonymous with genius. He couldn’t get a job in physics for two years after graduation. Worked as an assistant patent examiner, passed over for promotion until he “fully mastered machine technology.”

E. O. Wilson

“Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and a New York Times bestseller. A major contributor to sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. Blind in one eye.”

Michael Jordan

“Considered by many the greatest basketball player of all time. Cut from the varsity basketball team in his sophomore year.”

Victor Frankl

“Wrote Man’s Search For Meaning, one of “the ten most influential books in the United States.” At the time of his death in 1997, the book had sold over 10 million copies. It had was translated into 24 languages. Imprisoned at several concentration camps by Nazis, including Auschwitz. The Nazis killed his wife and family.”

Marc Zupan

“Gold medal-winning Paralympic medalist in wheelchair rugby, the main figure in Oscar-nominated movie Murderball; guest at White House, skydived, rock-climbed. Quadriplegic from drunk driver accident.”

Jean-Dominique Bauby

“Wrote number one best-selling Diving Bell and the Butterfly, adapted into a movie that won multiple awards. At the age of 43, Bauby suffered a massive stroke. When he woke up twenty days later, he found he was entirely speechless; he could only blink. His mouth, arms, and legs became paralyzed, and he lost 60 pounds (27 kg) in the first 20 weeks after his stroke.”

— List from Joshua Spodek, Inc. Magazine

The people listed above are just a handful who are representative of many, many others who overcame adversity and went on to do truly amazing things in their lives. Other examples include Abraham Lincoln, Jackie Robinson, John McCain, Thomas Edison, Stephen Hawking, Helen Keller, and so on.

However, on the flip side of dealing with adversity is the sad fact that many people don’t respond well to it. These unfortunate people never, or seldom, find a way to overcome adversity so that they can become stronger for it. For whatever reasons, they don’t possess the coping mechanism and skills to rise above adversity. Instead of adversity and hardship building character for them, they usually experience the exact opposite.

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Thanks for reading. Copyright Terry Mansfield. All rights reserved.