Does adversity make a person stronger?

I was about to write the topic as "Does sufferings make a person stronger", but I am not sure whether that would be a good idea.

Anyway, I would like to open this topic with a quote from a historical figure whose name I have forgotten. (not exact quote, and translated from Chinese text. Twice)

"If the Heavens above wishes to give great responsibility to a person, that person will first be subjected to multitudes of adversity and pain and suffering, so that his body and spirit would be steeled, his will be made firm and his resolve as unshakable as a mountain. Only then would he be able to shoulder that great responsibility of all under heaven."

This has been quoted multiple times in a commentary of Emperor Ming Taizu's life.

The question here is, do you think difficulties, which may or may not extend to physical, mental and psychological suffering, would end up tempering a person into a strong a dependable type primed for greatness, or at the very least, success?

Discuss.

I would say that while adversity does not always make a person stronger, it is nevertheless the only way to go about it. Strength is not built through complacency.

It can play a role, but it's obviously not a guarantee. Sometimes, that which doesn't kill you just makes it easier for the next thing to kill you. Sometimes It Gets Worse without ever getting better. I'd look at it like exercise. A certain amount of resistance will make you stronger, but too much and you'll just injure yourself.

For a sufficiently broad definition of adversity, maybe.

Beating your head into a wall is a challenge, but unlikely to be a productive one.

I feel that getting through a great hardship makes other hardships look insignificant by comparison.

This is a big part of military training, Boot Camp is made way harder than normal life in the military for a reason, after boot camp you see regular problems in the civilian world and go "Pfft, that's nothing."

When we train, many of our exercises are meant to escalate, on purpose, in ways that are so unlikely it's not even funny, so you eventually fail. The point is that they want to see how crazy a situation has to get for you to lose your edge.

The worst I ever got was an exercise where my partner and I responded to a Domestic, the guy at the door had a gun and we disarmed and cuffed him.. A guy came at us with a gun in a hallway when we cleared the house and we wasted him, and then when we released a kidnapped pregnant woman who was in a closet bound and gagged, she grabbed the dead crooks gun off the floor, pointed it at her belly and said "I'LL SHOOT THE BABY!!!" My partner managed to disarm her, and we made sure to procedurally cuff her from the front since that's what you do with pregnant women under arrest.

After that, pretty much any Domestic I've ever responded to really hasn't seemed that bad.

If you're willing to confront it, probably.

Adversity by itself? Definitively not, since that which doesn't kill you weakens you or maims you. "Continuous successfull endurance", as in a programmed amount of hardship in a relatuvely controllable environment, on the other hand, yeah, that ought to make one stronger. That's the definition of (well-done) physical training and school as well.

And training in general. And learning.

Yes, it does.

If you experience great hardships, even if it's just once, it's going to affect you. New hardships that might be not as bad will look tame in comparison and you will be able to get through it much easier than someone for which said hardship actually is really bad.

One could even say that people aren't as much "stronger" in the sense that they can actually take worse things, but rather that they see those things as less worse than another person would.

Maybe adversity makes you stronger once it ends. However, the people I've seen get into adversity without ever getting out of it generally seem weaker than they were before every day was a constant struggle. And of course, while I've never personally met someone who was hit with so much adversity they broke completely, I'm certainly aware that such can happen.

Yeah I think so, this also goes for websites.

It depends, on a lot of things, I suspect. Sometimes it does lead to one becoming stronger. Other times, the person doesn't heal and is more susceptible to getting hurt again. Other other times, the damaged turn around and do some damage of their own.

What I don't know much about is what it depends on. What makes different people more resilient than others when up against different things?

If you overcome that adversity, sure.

The question is just - at what price?

Like most things in life, it depends on the individual in question.

^ Not true. The best teacher hands down is failure. If you don't know what it's like to fail and learn from experience, you will never know what it's like to succeed.

If at first you don't succeed...

Go back to bed. What's the point in trying again?

Yeah, I think a little adversity makes a person stronger. You need to be able to see incremental success against it though, otherwise there's no incentive to keep going.

Depends on the person really, it'll either make them stronger or break their psyche in two.

Depends on the adversity, too. I think one problem in this thread is that "adversity" is such a damn broad term... I mean Dan is absolutely right as far as everyday adversities are concerned, but anything beyond that? Yeah, I think in anything beyond that my comment applies.

Too much can kill you or leave you a mess. What is 'too much' or 'just right' varies.

So what is sufficient to make one person here rise up and say "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED" and deal with it and come out better, is too much for another person - or even the same person at a different stage in their life. I can handle certain things now that would've ruined me earlier in life, and some things today would physically mess me up that I'd shrug off when I was younger.

In general, growing up in a nurturing, stimulating healthy environment makes you stronger, the more the better. Having challenges to overcome can make you stronger, but not if they're devastating or the like.

Well, yes, obviously it depends on the person and the situation. When I spoke about adversity I wasn't thinking of a cage bout with an MMA champion or crippling depression or anything.

edited 2nd May '11 1:49:11 PM by DanEile

I think adversity doesn't make someone stronger so much as it reveals who is already well-enough equipped to handle it, and who isn't.

Adversity, as long as it is in limits of person, can make someone stronger. You learn, you prepare and become better to face it. That's why people in sports slowly train themselves, too much at once you can't handle it, perhaps become permanently weakened. To truly become stronger, cahllenges must be amde that, challenging, not damaging. They msut challenge person, yet leave him enoughroom to bail out when situation becomes impossible.

If one faces situation that he can not, deal with but is eventualy able to return to state before problems, it only shows that he can recover. Perhas he has learned and can now face same situation better. But too much and one cannot recover.

I don't think adversity is what makes people stronger, I think it's taking small simple things and doing them repeatedly while incrementally increasing resistance against you (like in weightlifting).

For instance, you know those kind of people who just seem really social/sociable, are really well-spoken and just have people flocking to them? Well, they probably started out with simple greetings (a "Hi" here, a "How're you doing?" there) and incrementally built from there, and I don't think any of the possible adversity in their way (like, say, insecurity over being around people) was what made them STRONGER.

Wanting to OVERCOME the adversity, on the other hand, is usually one of the biggest MOTIVATIONS for making a person stronger, but I don't believe adverse circumstances themselves build strength (OR character, but that's probably a different discussion).

Adversity doesn't make people stronger—it when circumstances collude to make people WEAKER.