every person and enterprise are growing exponentially. Everyone is stretched. Many suffer under the chronic burden or their capacity falls short of what is demanded when it matters most. Others live with a persistent gap between their existing capacity (what they have) and the required capacity (what the world demands), never fulfilling their potential.”
Jackson, now 37, was determined to live up to his desired capacity. His mental and physical tenacity helped him return to work and become a detective. “When you do this job, you take risks,” he postures. “That’s just the nature of being a narcotic detective or a police officer.” The events of more than a decade ago, however, are vividly ingrained in his memory, and still cause him to have sleep-disturbing nightmares on a regular basis. Nevertheless, Jackson taps into his “spiritual endowment” for strength. “If you don’t have faith in God, you can forget it,” Jackson states. “God has His time for me. If He says it’s time to go, then it’s time to go. That’s what I believe.”
Jackson, who was out of work for 10 months, received no emotional support or counseling from his employer. “Mentally you might expect [being shot] as part of the job. But when it actually happens, it’s a shock to your system.”
Stoltz has broken down how workers deal with crisis into four components called CORE (Control, Ownership, Reach, and Endurance). Jackson’s recovery from his shooting is clearly defined in two of those principles:
Control–focus on what you can influence. When adversity strikes, to what degree do you perceive that you can influence the situation at hand? Higher AQ people always perceive that there is something that can be done. The higher a person’s AQ, the more unlikely they are to be able to hear or process the word “impossible.” They tend to be fairly relentless.
At the time of the accident, Jackson remembers a sergeant telling him that he’d never be able to use that arm again. “And this was the only thing that made me cry at that moment,” he recalls. “I was determined that this would not be the case,” says Jackson.
Stoltz says that low AQ people suffer from learned helplessness, which is really the belief that what you do does not matter. This decimates people. It attacks their immune system and they get sick. It’s a major cause of depression. It also, of course, makes people want to give up at the time when their efforts may mean the most. This CORE dimension, according to Stoltz, correlates most closely to health and vitality.
Endurance–imagine what the adversity looks like once it’s passed. When adversity strikes, how long do you perceive it’s going to last? High AQ people always see the light at the end of the longest tunnel. “We’re talking [about] prisoners of war [who,] when given no hope they will ever get out alive, [are] still envisioning what their lives will be like when this is over. Low AQ people tend to see adversity as dragging on forever: