Book review: The Power Of Adversity
I have to admit, when I looked at the title of Al Weatherhead’s book, The Power of Adversity, I got stuck on the word adversity before I even cracked open the pages. I never say that I faced adversity in my life, rather I faced challenges. Each event in my life simply led to my growth and self-improvement. Why on earth is this author using such a negative word? Then I opened the book and I started to read.
The sub-title of The Power of Adversity is Tough Times Can Make You Stronger, Wiser, and Better. Ah-ha, now this is something that Weatherhead and I are on the same page about. He calls it adversity and I call it challenges, but regardless of semantics, each distressful life event can and should ultimately be used to our advantage to make us stronger, wiser, and better.
Weatherhead’s adversities –alcoholism, rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, family estrangement — are his own, but the lessons he derived from them are universal. He expands upon twenty-two of them in his book.
I greatly appreciated that he didn’t try to sugar coat life’s challenges. While some self-help authors tend to say “Buck up, it’s all good”, Weatherhead writes:
“Facing adversity is never easy. I’ll do my best not to minimize the sheer terror and difficulty associated with suffering as I offer ways to use adversity to better ourselves and the world we share.”
He kept his promise. Throughout the book, Weatherhead is very honest about the anger and grief he experienced while in the thick of his own adverse circumstances. This makes the book extremely empathetic to any challenges we are facing. There is nothing worse than having someone pat us on the back while we are down, dolling out cliches like ‘everything happens for a reason’ or ‘that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger’.
Empathetic, but lovingly firm. Ultimately, Weatherhead is saying you can wallow in self-pity and bitterness, or you can extract the lessons you need to learn and move on.
All twenty-two lessons might not be applicable to you, but I consider a self-help book a success when I extract even one lesson that resonates with me. In The Power of Adversity I found two that jumped out and said ‘hey, you need to apply these right here and now’:
- Instead of “Why me? … Why not me?
- Never think “I have to do it”. Instead think “‘I have it to do.”
If you are facing some life challenges, I can guarantee that at least one, if not multiple lessons from The Power of Adversity, will be meaningful to you and help you find opportunities for growth.
As Weatherhead says:
“Adversity is the bridge that can carry us to our future – it will take us to where we can live fully, bravely, and meaningfully in the world.”
More information!
A copy of The Power Of Adversity will be given away in a contest here at Silver & Grace on April 5th.
The Power Of Adversity is available for purchase through Amazon by clicking the Silver & Grace book recommendations.
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In sixth or seventh grade, the teacher asked us to write one word on the board representing the most important thing in life that helps us grow. Other people wrote about family, love, God. I wrote “adversity.” Now that I’m in my 50s and still keep growing through adversity, I wished I’d written “chocolate.”
Lori – LOL Okay, but if you had written chocolate you’d be 600 lbs with clogged arteries by now