Does adversity make us better ?

I have been wondering if "Adversity forces us to become better". About a couple of days ago I had a late night at work trying to fix some stuff that should have never reached that stage. Having fixed it I started wondering why we got here and started to brainstorm about it and started putting processes in place so that we do not have such a situation again. Which made me wonder why did we not do all this brainstorming earlier and this is not the first time this is happening.

I find this true not only in my life but in general too. We start questioning the government administration only when there is a calamity. They start putting in processes or special measures only when there is some threat. This is the same in other organizations that I worked for too.

Another thing that I have noticed is that early in ones career if you have faced adversity at work then you come out of it stronger as against those that have had a pretty easy time when they joined a job. I feel the reason is because they were in a situation that demanded a higher level of concentration and faster learning so they were forced to pick up things at a faster rate thus making them better in a shorter period of time.

So now if we say that adversity makes us better then why don't we be in adverse situations all the time so that we become better faster? The answer to this is no. The reason is when an individual faces an adverse situation his body reacts to it by pumping more adrenalin and heightening the senses. When you come out of a very adverse situation you feel euphoric and light headed but as soon as you feel the situation has passed you start to feel very tired and drowsy. If there is too much adversity and tension people suffer from burnouts after which you feel like doing nothing.

So its good to have a balance of adverse situations and calm peaceful situations so that in these situations each time you jump up a notch and improve and you use the peaceful situations to reflect and recover and improve even more.