It is a cliche that adversity or failure leads to learning - or rather that there are no failures only learning and experiences. Dr APJ Abdul Kalam even coined F.A.I.L as First Attempt In Learning. While there is a lot of truth to that sentiment, today’s post is about prolonged adversity or setbacks or failures that leave you frustrated and strained. What good can come out of it?
As per Paul Wong, a lot. He, with colleagues, has come up with a Deep and Wide hypothesis of giftedness and creativity, according to which adversities and negative emotions can actually help us by making us search deep within ourselves and explore wider outside for resources that can help us overcome that adversity. This pressure at times, leads to creative and ingenious solutions.
To understand the Deep and Wide hypothesis more clearly, lets look at what can happen once you are presented with an obstacle, or adverse condition, while you are focused on a goal. In any real life situations obstacles or adverse conditions are a given and inevitable- its only a matter of when and not if.
Typically, if something impedes our achievement or forward motion towards a goal, it leads to frustration. This frustration is a negative feeling, but also an accurate barometer of where we stand as far as goal achievement is concerned. This frustration can also spur us into action.
As per Wong, and colleagues, there are 3 stages while confronting the frustration:
In the first stage, also called invigoration stage, we do more of the same stuff - trying even harder. For e.g., if I am studying for a competitive exam, and my mock test results lead to frustration, I will double down on studying and putting in more study hours - the same things I was doing earlier, but more vigorously as a natural coping response. In this stage you go all in- but with limited experimentation.
Suppose despite this, my mock test scores do not increase; I’m faced with even greater setback and frustration and this leads to the second stage of exploration kicking in. This is the stage in which I dig deeper in myself and discover inner resources like persistence or reach outside for support and increase my resourcefulness. Combining inner and outer resources, I’m more likely to come up with creative and innovative solutions to my problems. In my case, I might discover group studying works for me, or reach out to a good tutor, mentor for guidance and help. In this case, desperation leads you to persevere, tap into your resourcefulness and come up with creative alternatives.
Of course life is not that simple, and at times you may need to move to stage 3, when stage 2 has not been able to make forward movement towards the goal. In stage 3, you can either disengage from the old goal and substitute it with a new goal or you may give up completely and become helpless and depressed. Continuing our example, if despite studying better in study groups and getting help from a coach, I am not able to succeed in the competitive exam, I may either go for higher studies in a different area or become depressed and give in to (learned) helplessness.
What is worth noting is that in case I am able to succeed in stage 2, then my life story narrative is of a survivor who has been able to overcome adversity against odds and that by tapping into ones own persistence, resourcefulness and creativity. This experience of having gone through fire and emerging unscathed and the narrative and perception built around it, leads to me becoming even stronger and more resilient the next time. That which doesn’t kill makes you stronger!
Of course you may brush aside this as mere conjecture, but Wong presents some evidence form animal and children’s studies for how persistence and resourcefulness that has been developed as a result of coping with adverse situations generalizes to later situations. He also provides biographical evidence where gifted and creative people have suffered relatively more from early traumatic incidents in their lives as compared to normal people. Of course going deep into all that evidence would require a post of its own.
For now, the take home message is when adversity presents itself, be grateful. You will either go all in and achieve your goal, or search deep and wide and come up with a creative solution, or give up the unachievable, possibly fictitious goal, and substitute it with a more meaningful and authentic goal that is more in tune with yourself.
It is only the rare case that neither of the three outcomes happen and you give up and become helpless and depressed, that adversity has a real bad consequence- so go to the adversity gym on a daily basis but know your limitations and breakpoints!
References: Wong, P. T. P., & Worth, P. (2017). The deep-and-wide hypothesis in giftedness and creativity [Special issue]. Psychology and Education, 54(3/4). Retrieved from http://www.psychologyandeducation.net/pae/category/volume-54-no-3-4-2017/
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