"This only use of an obstacle is to be overcome. All that an obstacle does with brave men is, not to frighten them, but to challenge them."
Woodrow Wilson
Like everyone else, I do not care for difficulties. They make me stressed and feel exhausted. It always seems like they go on forever. When people talk to me about their challenges, they are usually angry, frustrated, and crying. Now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever had anyone tell me about their challenges with excitement.
Although this is how I use to feel about challenges, I am now excited when I face a new challenge. They are part of life, and they make us grow. Sometimes, when I am not facing a challenge, I will go out and find a challenge to conquer. The feeling of accomplishment after getting through a difficult challenge is rewarding. After I have conquered a challenge, I am joyful and feel accomplished.
Once I have celebrated an accomplishment, it is time to find another challenge. If I wait too long to start a new challenge, I become bored and unfulfilled. Starting a new challenge always helps me feel like I am living with purpose. If life is too easy, I don't learn anything. Challenges are the best learning experiences.
"Accept the challenges, so that you can feel exhilaration of victory."
George S. Patton
Although some find it difficult to get through challenges, it is necessary to succeed in life. There are six ways that I deal with challenges in my life. These steps are be thankful for the challenge, make a positive response to challenges a habit, take responsibility for my life, turn challenges into opportunities, connect what I already know with the challenge, and continue to move forward.
After I started putting these steps into practice, I began to see my stress level and depression decrease. Now, I am less likely to grumble and complain when things become difficult. Of course, I am not perfect, so I still am working on these steps and my grumbling during challenges. It is an on-going process, but I am getting better with every challenge I face.
Be thankful for the challenge.
"Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life."
Robert Louis Stevenson
When I go through challenges, I am initially not thankful. This is especially true when I was younger. Every time I found myself going through hard times, I would start to panic and overreact. Of course, this made everything worse. When I got through the challenge, I would feel horrible, because, due to my overreaction, the challenge took longer for me to get through.
What I didn't understand is that thankfulness would have solved a lot of my problem. During a challenge, it is the attitude that makes all the difference. When I was thankful for the challenge and excited about what I would learn, the challenge was more insightful and easier to get through. On the other hand, if I went through a challenge with an attitude, I would stress throughout the challenge and feel horrible when it was over.
There are still some challenges that are hard to feel thankful for, so I have to consciously make thankful statements to get through the challenge. This is where a gratitude journal comes in handy. Each day, it is important to write down everything that I am thankful for, and that includes all the challenges I am facing at the moment. It is also crucial to my success to write down what I have learned from other challenges and be grateful for those lessons.
"We can always find something to be thankful for, and there may be reasons why we ought to be thankful for even those dispensations which appear dark and frowning."
Albert Barnes
Make a positive response to challenges a habit.
"As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kinds of thoughts we wish to dominate over our lives."
Henry David Thoreau
When I respond to a challenge, it is usually out of a habit that I have formed. Most of the time, I form habits without thinking. They are usually bad and negative habits. My negative response to challenges was a bad habit that I had to correct. Once I changed my response, I was able to habitually respond to challenges with a positive attitude.
Thinking negative thoughts about challenges became a habit. As I started to research personal development, I realized that my negative thoughts were the first thing that needed to go. Every time I start to think negatively about a situation, I simply stop myself and replace that thought with a positive one. This process did not happen overnight. It has taken a long time to think positively when facing challenges.
Once I learned to replace my negative thoughts with positive ones, I had to think those positive thoughts over and over, again. Now, I am able to quickly replace my negative thoughts with positive thoughts. This is because it has become a habit. The habit of thinking positively is a good habit, and I am proud of my ability to think positively through negative situations.
"Habits change into character."
Ovid
Take responsibility for my life.
"One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility."
Eleanor Roosevelt
There was a time when I did not take responsibility for my life. At that time, I would blame everybody and everything else for my failures. For example, I didn't receive my college degree until I was thirty-five, because my teachers didn't teach me right or no one encouraged me enough. This thinking was incorrect, and, now, I understand that my success was in my hands.
It is now clear to me that my success in challenges is totally my responsibility. If I fail, I can blame no one but myself. This also includes my attitude through the situation. Like I always tell people, positive thinking and speaking are the two key ingredients to success. For me to succeed, I must use my words and thoughts responsibly. This is not my family, friends, or teachers responsibility, so I cannot blame others for my failures or attitudes.
Bad things happen to everyone. Sometimes there is nothing we can do about the bad thing that happens, but we have a choice to act appropriately in the situation. Our actions speak louder than words. There were times when I would throw a fit, because someone had spoken rudely to me. Although I could not change how they spoke to me, I can change how I speak back to them.
"The price of greatness is responsibility."
Winston Churchill
Turn challenges into opportunities.
"But we can turn challenges into opportunities if we look outwards to the realities of the global economy and modernize our internal institutions in ways that will equip Europe to meet that challenge and create confidence amongst the public."
John Hutton
As a child, I always loved a new challenge. There is a story I always tell my children that makes them laugh and illustrates turning challenges into opportunities. There were two huge trees in my front yard. They were great climbing trees. Every day, I would attempt to climb one of the trees. At first, I would simply fall out of the tree. This did not stop me at all. Once I got up and dusted myself off, I would turn around and climb back up the tree.
Each day, I would get farther and farther up the tree. The more I climbed the more I learned. Every time I would climb again, I would remember what I learned to do and not to do from the last time I climbed the trees. As I climbed up the tree, I remembered each spot for my hand and foot. This continuous tree climbing made me aware of the more dangerous spots, so I could slow down and take care as I passed by them. When I got to the top, I felt like a winner, but I was not done. Once that challenge was over, I was ready for a bigger challenge, so I went looking for more opportunities to succeed.
Now that I am grown up and no longer climb trees, I look for other opportunities to challenge me. The principle I used as a child to climb the tree, I now use as I face challenges as a woman, wife, mom, and writer. When I started writing, I struggled with fear that I would not live up to my own expectations. As I wrote my blogs and started writing my book, I used the fear of failure to propel me into action and do my best. The one thing I don't want to do is let myself down. Failure to me is simply not taking action. There are opportunities for me everywhere, but I need to take the opportunities and face all my challenges. In my opinion, taking challenges and changing them into opportunities is the definition of success.
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
Winston Churchill
Connect what I already know with the challenge.
"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."
John Dewey
What I have learned through my challenges, I write down, so I can use the information the next time I go through a similar challenge. All of my challenges and what I have learned are in journals that I love to go back and read. When I am frustrated with a situation, I write down my frustration and, when I find the solution, I go back and write down the answer. These journals are stored in a place that is easily accessible.
Another way to get through a challenge is by research. When I go through a difficulty, I look up what I am going through and find others who have gone through the same thing. Once I have found someone who has successfully gone through the challenge, I study how they got through the challenge. Usually, I make the answer into steps that I can follow.
When I go through a challenge, I also enjoy finding a friend that has gone through something similar and asking them to help me. They can give me pointers and help me with my plan to succeed. If I get sad or ready to give up, they can help me by encouraging me. Once I get through the challenge and celebrate my accomplishment, the friend can help me celebrate, too.
"Learning is not a product of schooling but the lifelong attempt to acquire it."
Albert Einstein
Continue to move forward.
"Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with power that is greater than ourselves to do it."
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
The one thing that I believe gets me closer to success is always moving forward. If I stop, I may lose momentum and never get through each challenge. As long as I am moving forward, I am getting closer to succeeding in life. My college education is a great example of continuously moving forward. It has always been my dream to receive as much information as possible. For me, lifelong learning is not an option, because I have made a pact with myself to continuously learn for the rest of my life.
When I met my husband, Brenton, I was working and not attending college classes. He encouraged me to get a college education, so I took his advice and enrolled in a college class. Sometimes, I would take several classes and other times I would only take one. There were semesters that I didn't take any classes, but I would read certain books that kept me motivated or learning about business. After many years of taking classes off and on, I decided I had played around with my education enough. It only took me a year and a half from the time I decided to complete my degree to my graduation ceremony.
Now, I am applying the moving forward concept to my graduate degree. This is a story that I like to share with others, because it shows how moving forward can help each of us get through difficult times, reach our goals, and continue to succeed. Life will be full of challenges, but I know that I can learn and grow as I get through each one. In my life I've had numerous challenges, but I am a better person for getting through them.
"Determine never to be idle. No person will ever have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
Thomas Jefferson
This week's challenge:
This week's challenge is to start looking at challenges as ways to grow and learn. When I am able to have a positive attitude toward each challenge, I am able to get through them faster and more confident. The six steps above guide me through my challenges, and they prepare me for the next challenge I will face. When I complete the six steps, I am in control of the challenge instead of the challenge in control of me.
"Reading makes a full man, meditation makes a profound man, discourse a clear man."
Benjamin Franklin