Albert J. Weatherhead, chairman and CEO of Weatherchem, a private manufacturer of plastic closures for food, spice, pharmaceutical and nutraceutical products, was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions about his inspirational and deeply moving book The Power of Adversity: Tough Times Can Make You Stronger, Wiser, and Better.
Al Weatherhead describes how the serious and life changing, and even life threatening power of adversity can transform a person through the experience of dramatic personal growth.
Thanks to Al Weatherhead for his time, and for his fascinating and comprehensive responses to the questions. They are greatly appreciated.
What was the background to writing this book The Power of Adversity: Tough Times Can Make You Stronger, Wiser, and Better?
Al Weatherhead: I’ve had my share of major adversity. I have been a drunk. I’ve endured failed business ventures… failed marriages… and I’ve suffered the terrors of clinical depression, crippling arthritis and terrifying heart disease.
I had sunk as low as I thought one could go. Then things turned around for me. Today, for example, I am a recovered alcoholic. I’m deeply in love with my wife. I have conquered both my depression and my arthritis, and my body now shows no physical evidence of heart disease. In addition, I’ve been able to build a multi-million dollar manufacturing company that provided me with the means to be a major philanthropist, endowing hospitals, universities and charities which offer valuable help to thousands of people.
Why was I able to persevere over my adversity? This question tormented and fascinated me. What did I do in my life that I wasn’t doing when adversity was threatening to overwhelm me? How had I changed?
My introspection provided me with a sudden illumination. I came to understand the power of adversity and some of the lessons it can teach us, starting with the all important truth that we are not meant, in the grand scheme of life, to be happy and comfortable. Rather, we are meant to forge our characters on the anvil of adversity.
And so I formulated the premises of this book, which is that most of us experience monumental periods of adversity and it’s these devastating setbacks which propel us in our quest to become fully and creatively human. Sometimes we get stuck, so stuck, in fact, that only great pain will impel us to move. It’s then that the power of adversity is revealed. But to see it requires a new way of looking at the world, a radical shifting of perspective, which share with readers of my book.
What do you mean by adversity, and does it mean different things for different people?
Al Weatherhead: In my book I’m not talking about daily irritations such as traffic jams, computer glitches, and so on. We can usually shrug those off pretty well. I’m referring to tragic, life-changing adversity like cancer, divorce, and getting fired.
Such major adversity can drive any of us to contemplate the unthinkable: committing suicide quickly with a gun, a razor blade or an overdose of pills, or killing ourselves more slowly but just as effectively, by drowning our pain in booze, or obliterating it, along with our minds, with mood-altering addictive drugs.
Of course, a person’s sense of a particular adversity will depend on their circumstances and personalities. For some, a divorce is an adversity to be shrugged off. For others, separating from a spouse can be devastating. But whatever we our particular adversity, when we embrace our problems using my techniques we can empower ourselves to achieve unimagined success.
You recommend embracing adversity while most people would prefer to avoid it. Why is embracing adversity so important?
Al Weatherhead: Alcoholics Anonymous taught me that the easiest (and most useless) response for a drunk is the geographical cure: go somewhere else and hide. Temporarily the problems seem to diminish, but wherever you go, your problems always go with you. Such an escape is a delusion.
Geographical cures –like all forms of problem avoidance – only change the external circumstances of adversity, but the interior roads of negative motivation and emotion remain unexplored. That’s why our adversity would like nothing more than for us to try to avoid it. The more we do so, the stronger its negative influence becomes.
So resist the temptation to avoid your adversity. Instead, embrace it! Temper yourself on the anvil of your adversity using my techniques and you’ll move ever closer to mastering your troubles, and be that much more at peace.
Al Weatherhead (photo left)
You describe adversity as building walls to tear down. What do you mean by that?
Al Weatherhead: When you let adversity build walls around you, you have the safety of those walls. But you can’t see out. And nobody can see in. You may think you’re in a fortress. But you’re really in a prison enduring solitary confinement.
My illnesses gave me the wake-up calls I needed in this regard. Until I got sick with rheumatoid arthritis I thought I could conquer anything and everything. I didn’t need anybody, and booze would get me through. But getting sick the way I did – first with RA and then with heart disease – showed me that I needed help if I was going to make it, and I became willing to ask for it. This was something I had to learn how to do, and I’m glad I did, because it changed my life.
Tearing down the walls of adversity by reaching out to others isn’t the only way to progress. You can also escape adversity’s shadow by finding something – anything –you think you can do to tackle the problem you’re confronting. I present a methodology for doing this in my book.
Suffice to say that the adversity we perceive as an exterior problem is often really the symptom of a problem deep within ourselves. It is only by tearing down the walls of adversity that those deep-rooted issues will at long last be revealed, advancing us on our journey to master adversity.
The economy is going through a difficult period, yet you see opportunity where others see dismay. Why do you consider this time to be an opportunity?
Al Weatherhead: First and foremost, life is nothing but opportunities that may come to us disguised as adversity. Second, as with personal adversity, professional adversity is not a curse, but a gift. When we embrace professional adversity during touch economic times, we receive a tempering of our professional viability that can empower us to achieve unimagined success.
The tips I share in my book on how to be proactive concerning adversity can help any businessperson leverage adversity to reach new heights of professional success in a tough economy. For example, we’ve talked a little bit about tearing down the walls that adversity builds. One can apply that lesson in business by networking with colleagues or collaborating with employees.
If you’re looking for work, proactively reach out to others for help and your options will multiply. If you are a business owner and your business is currently suffering, walk around and talk to all your employees. Ask: How can we improve this place? What’s wrong here?
Tear down the walls and I guarantee you will get more valuable information in just a few hours than you could possibly act upon in a year!
When a businessperson uses my advice, he or she can seize myriad opportunities and become the master of adversity during tough economic times – as well as when financial prosperity once again returns, which I’m confident it will.
You see problem solving as a joy. That view is not shared by everyone. Why do you suggest looking at problem solving in a fresh and positive light?
Al Weatherhead: As I said above, life’s opportunities and adversities are two sides of the same coin, so we certainly can’t avoid problem solving. If that’s the case, why not make it a joy by looking at our problems in a fresh and positive light?
When I have a problem to solve, I don’t say, I have to do it. I say, I have it to do. This helps me take control of my adversity – and my life.
If you think that’s just semantics, please think again. Your adversity is real. It can’t be banished. But it can be transformed by your perspective!
As I explain in my book, this shifting of perspective allows ones to look at life, what happens to us and what we do in a profoundly different way, which is a primary step to mastering adversity.
As the Baby Boom enters to what is considered traditionally to be the retirement years, you suggest an alternative way of looking at life changes. Is traditional retirement the only option?
Al Weatherhead: Of course traditional retirement is not the only option! I believe age is a state of mind. What’s more, if you embrace practicing my approach to dealing with life’s trials and tribulations, you’ll discover a personal fountain of youth that will provide you with the physical, spiritual and emotional energy to experience the world with a child’s wonder and delight.
The number one factor to maintaining your youth is to develop a youthful perspective – by keeping a positive mindset. The mind, overwhelmed by fear, can be like a drop of mercury on a table, slithering and breaking into wildly evasive squirts and pieces. On the other hand, the mind when positively rooted in a deep passion for life, is more certain and powerful than the forces which rotate the earth.
You will go a long way toward overcoming your adversities that do so much to age you when you avail yourself of the power of positive thinking. I know this to be true because it is that same power that enabled me to control my alcoholism, beat arthritis and accomplish what was once considered impossible: total reversal of heart disease.
You see, staying young is all about choice. So choose to be young – or restore your youth – by thinking positively with the right imagery. Decide now to regain the healing optimism we all once had as infants learning to walk, when we took our first albeit wobbly but determined steps into our bright futures!
Many business people, after building a successful company, fail to have a succession plan. Why is this the case and what should they do about it?
Al Weatherhead: Succession planning is difficult to tackle because it forces you to confront your own mortality by changing your mindset to visualize the day when you will no longer be around.
Tension, conflict, fear, emotional hurt – all the hallmarks of adversity – will be with you every step of the way in succession planning. But like it or not, change is coming. Get moving right away to confront it. The sooner you begin to address the complexities of succession planning, the longer you’ll have to be around to help the transition go smoothly for your business.
How can new leaders be groomed the right way to make a seamless transition to a new generation of leaders for the company?
Al Weatherhead: Your business is a living, breathing, growing thing, and so should be your relationship with your new management team. You know best the heartbeat of your company, and if you hire executive talent who share the rhythms of that heartbeat, they will enthusiastically and successfully lead your company – if you allow them do so!
Give your new team free rein to explore (under your benevolent watchfulness) even the seemingly dumbest ideas. One of two things will happen. Either they will surprise and delight you by persuading you that their notions are sound, or your patience will be rewarded as your questioning and prodding guides them to realize for themselves that their proposed course of action is ill-advised.
Bottom line: let your new team have the time and space to take root; to let them realize their own great successes and small failures as they learn for themselves the practical business lessons that you once had to learn. It’s my bet that your new team will take far less time than you took to master those lessons!
What is the first step a person should take toward taking a more positive approach to adversity in these seemingly difficult times?
Al Weatherhead: The most important advice I can give is to take advantage of all the new opportunities presented in your personal unending stream – and infinite bounty – of adversity. Remember:
* Adversity is all powerful – either it creates misery or destroys it.
* Adversity will always hurt – it is up to us to transform that hurt into limitless freedom and positive transformation
* Adversity is the bridge that can carry us to our future – where we can live fully, bravely and meaningfully in the world.
Approach your adversity with enthusiasm and a “can-do” positve spirit and you’ll be buoyed along the river of life with its inevitable daily surprises – good and bad.
What is next for Al Weatherhead?
Al Weatherhead: At my age you would probably forgive me if I chose to spend my time reminiscing about the past... If I lost myself in happy, misty reveries of days spent with old and dear friends... But for me, that could never be. I relish the present moment and planning for the future!
Over 40 years ago I started my company with faith, trust, enthusiasm, energy – and one product for two customers. Today I still revel in going to work each day in the best plastics closure company in America!
On a typical day I may chat with a plant worker and feel the surge of human connection... engage in one of my philanthropic causes and experience the sweetness of knowing that I am making a positive difference in the world...swim laps in a pool, scudding through the water like a cloud through the blue sky as I meditate on the miracle and mantra of my breathing…and end each day talking with my wife, sharing all that has passed between us and anticipating all that is yet to come...
All these great old and new joys I owe to my blessed enemy, adversity. My life is not perfect. No life can be. Adversity still haunts and taunts me. But I will never let it suck me back into the shadows. Instead, I will continue to grow by taking advantage of all the new opportunities presented to me by my own, personal unending stream – and infinite bounty – of adversity.
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My book review of The Power of Adversity: Tough Times Can Make You Stronger, Wiser, and Better by Al Weatherhead with Fred Feldman.
Albert J. Weatherhead is the author of The Power of Adversity: Tough Times Can Make You Stronger, Wiser, and Better and chairman and CEO of Weatherchem, a private manufacturer of plastic closures for food, spice, pharmaceutical and nutraceutical products. Please visit www.powerofadversity.net or www.weatherchem.com for more information.
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