Estimated Read Time: 4 Minutes
Learning From Adversity
How to Overcome Life's Inevitable Setbacks
By Bill Harris
Founder of Centerpointe Research Institute
Most people see adversity as the most undesirable thing that could happen.
Successful people, however, realize that adversity has a tremendous gift if you know how to look for it.
If you think back, most of the positive turning points of your life came out of what looked like a disaster when it initially happened.
The Seed of a Greater Benefit
In his study of the most successful people of his time, here is Napoleon Hill's famous conclusion regarding failures, adversities, and setbacks:
"Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit."
When Hill says this, he really means every adversity, setback, or failure. He's telling you that when something goes wrong, focus on what you want!
Also, notice that Hill calls it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. This means you have to look for it, and when you find it, you have to germinate it. You have to take action.
I've told the story before of how Centerpointe got started. After being in business for a year, mostly due to the fact that we didn't know what we were doing in terms of creating a business, we had a huge 43 customers.
Then my doorbell rang and when I opened it I was served with a million dollar lawsuit, alleging that I had stolen a competitor's technology, mailing list, and a number of other charges.
The allegations were totally frivolous, but I had no money, and the competitor did. I had images of losing my house, which was really the only asset I had, and owing huge amounts of legal fees, which I could not afford.
I asked my attorney how much all of this might cost. I'll never forget what he told me. He said, "If this goes all the way to trial, you'll know why they say 'don't make a Federal case out of it,' because it could cost as much as $150,000."
Well, I didn't have $3,000, much less $150,000, and I was pretty scared. I woke up in the middle of the night many times and sat up in bed with my heart pounding. I had an unscrupulous nut coming after me, and I had few resources and didn't know how I was going to protect myself.
Does this sound like a disaster to you? It did to me, I'll tell you.
Luckily, I had been reading Think and Grow Rich. It seemed very improbable to me that there wasn't any benefit to being sued in Federal court for a million dollars. But after being served with the lawsuit…
…I sat down at my desk and decided to make a list of all the potential benefits.
Change Your Focus
The first thing I wrote down was that I would learn a lot about the legal process, though as I wrote it, I remember thinking that this was a benefit I would be very willing to forego.
Then, other potential benefits began to occur to me.
Once it was over, the competitor, who had been hounding me in various other ways for some time, would be out of my hair. I wish I still had that list, as it eventually had fifty or sixty potential benefits, and as I remember, every one of them eventually came true.
The one thing that happened from writing this list was that it changed my focus from what I didn't want to what I did want. Once I did that, my whole attitude changed and the amount of suffering I experienced went way down.
I let my imagination go and began to see Centerpointe the way it is now, even though at that point it was a total pipe dream.
So being sued, and finding out what it might cost, as awful as it was, triggered me to focus my mind on what I wanted.
It caused me to think of things in a new way, it focused my mind on the possibilities, and it caused me to draw on resources and take action in a way I would not have otherwise done.
This is what I want you to do whenever things don't go the way you want them to. What seems like a terrible outcome can contain the very thing that will catapult you to success.
Tap Into Your Internal Resources
Here's what Hill says at one point in Think and Grow Rich: "Remember that all who succeed in life get off to a bad start, and pass through many heartbreaking struggles before they 'arrive.' The turning point in the lives of those who succeed usually comes at the moment of some crisis, through which they are introduced to their 'other selves.'"
I'm going to tell you something right now that is very important, so please listen carefully:
Right now, you have access to resources you have no idea you have, and these resources are very powerful and very extensive. The chances are that without some adversity to place you in contact with them…
…you would never discover them.
Most people don't have the motivation, or the necessity, to dig deep inside and find them. But if you are determined to succeed, as I was, and if, when you encounter what looks like adversity, you immediately begin to look for that seed of an equivalent or greater benefit, you will begin to get in touch with those resources.
This is one of the greatest gifts of adversity. In fact, Napoleon Hill has said that the achievements of successful people are "in exact proportion to the emergencies they had to overcome."
