Mastering challenges in 3 easy steps — The Brilliance

Life is full of challenges for everyone.

However, some people seem to take on each challenge with confidence, while others find it challenging to overcome them.

Real leaders are delighted at mastering the challenges they face — they bring them a sense of accomplishment and can be very rewarding.

In reality, when you want to improve something and go up a level, you have to look for challenges.

Why?

Because mastering challenges is the most effective tool in life for growth.

The problem is, too often, you may find yourself facing the same challenges over and over again.

It’s in these moments that you start to lose all motivation to face the problem and lose sight of the potential lesson.

At this point, the challenges can become problems that can cause you to sink into despair, victimization and frustration.

As a creator of your own reality, you have the ability to overcome these challenges.

You must be in “active” mode and not “ reactive.”

It is with this sense of responsibility and awareness that you can start your journey towards a higher state of consciousness where challenges are no longer challenges, but opportunities to get a glimpse of a (future) better version of yourself.

Mastering challenges is often not difficult, but unfortunately, we often make it harder for ourselves than it is. In this article, you can find out how you will be better able to master challenges in the future.

“We were all born with a certain degree of power. The key to success is discovering this innate power and using it daily to deal with whatever challenges come our way.” Les brown the motivator

You will learn:

What is a challenge
How to overcome challenges
How I face new challenges
Why you should master challenges regularly
What influence our self-discipline has on challenges

What is a challenge?

A challenge is a task that is demanding.

What almost all challenges have in common is that it is an unusual situation in which you are challenged. If you face a challenge, it will push you to your limits and beyond.

Accordingly, we will often have to overcome ourselves if we want to master a challenge:

• For an unpleasant conversation or a phone call
• A jump from the 10-meter board
• Start a small talk in the elevator with strangers

Since we all have different experiences, strengths and weaknesses, challenges are an individual matter: While it takes a lot of effort to address an attractive person, others can only smile wearily at this task.

When we meet a challenge, we often feel nervousness — also called fear. This is perfectly normal as soon as we go to the edge of our comfort zone.

For this reason, many people often associate unpleasant feelings with challenges and try to avoid them. But real growth only happens when you face challenges.

To deal with challenges better in the future, you will now receive a simple 3-step plan.

Master challenges with these 3 steps:

1. Be proactive: you are the creator of your own reality!

When we are told that the situations in which we find ourselves and the emotions we live mainly come from ourselves, this can be difficult to accept.

This implies a massive paradigm shift, and it makes us take responsibility for our current situation.

The natural reaction is usually to resist and argue the opposite until this magic moment occurs: the realization that we do have control.

For many tasks and challenges, there is a particular time when you will face this challenge. For example:

• A presentation
• An interview
• A certain test
• Competition in sports
• A new job

Accordingly, there is usually enough time to prepare for the challenge and create plans. This is nothing more than hard work.

If you invest enough time in the preparation and do the important things during this time, I promise you that you will master the challenges. This type of behaviour is called proactivity.

Does this automatically mean that your expectations (e.g. you get the job after an interview) will come true? No, but if you do your best, prepare and face the challenge, you will always grow with the challenge — regardless of the end result.

If we decide to be in a “reactive” mode and be controlled by external factors, we can also choose not to be.

We should not be influenced by unpredictable events or by the negative emotions of the people around us.

Everything can be taken and taken away from a person, except for one thing, the last of human freedoms: to choose his attitude in all circumstances, to choose his own way.

What can you do to prepare for an upcoming challenge? Of course, this depends on the challenge. However, I can always recommend the following things:

a) Be proactive

When you are proactive, you only care about things that fall within your sphere of influence.

Also, you don’t care about the things you can’t do anything about.

You turn to what you are able to control and change, and that includes how you react to a given situation.

You cannot always change the behaviour of others. You have no control over the weather. You don’t even have a say in the score our favourite team will make this weekend.

But you can choose your thought processes and your responses.

b) Be responsible

Being proactive does not mean becoming an emotionless robot. It’s more like taking full control of your emotions.

Instead of shifting responsibility to external factors, you can start to take responsibility for it.

You stop thinking that the external circumstances have to change, and you realize that you can change yourself internally.

The proactive approach approaches things from the person’s internal point of view.

c) Visualize the desired end result

Remember that our mind thinks in pictures. These Images run in your head all the time — consciously or unconsciously. With these pictures, we create a large part of our life. You can take advantage of this by consciously controlling these images.

Take two to three minutes, relax, and see yourself mastering the challenge you want. For example, if you’re going to give a lecture in front of a group, visualize yourself confidently standing in front of the group and delivering your speech. How then people come to you and tell you how excited they were about your lecture.

d) Get help

We often think that we are unique in our problems. Still, I can disappoint you: Many people have already been in precisely the same or a similar situation as you are in and were able to master this challenge successfully.

Some of these people pass on their knowledge in the form of coaching, books, video courses, articles or seminars. In many cases, this knowledge is even free — as is mostly the case on this website.

2. Express gratitude for the challenges you face

People who have experienced significant challenges and difficulties in their life understand these kinds of things better.

These people are often the ones who express the most gratitude for the trivial things in life.

Also, they are not worried about the trivial problems that we all face.

When we choose to be more present, we then have a real chance to enjoy life, to value our experiences and to exploit the treasures there is to take.

When we submit to the reality of who we are, we allow ourselves to do what we can do.

The most significant rewards are offered to those who are ready to take big leaps.

The reward you receive, whether in the form of money, pride, or clarity of mind, will never be as high as the risk you were willing to take.

And the risk is rarely linked to something manageable, and it forces you to get out of your comfort zone. So many people want to do everything correctly and are afraid of mistakes.

Accordingly, they often do not go beyond the preparation phase. This is commonly used as an excuse not to face the challenge. It’s not about making everything perfect.

It is about doing your best, and you do it anyway and always have.

Perfection is an illusion anyway. When you do something for the first time, you don’t have to expect to do everything “right.”

Another point that often prevents us from facing our challenges is fear.

Many people want to act as soon as the fear has disappeared, but that’s not how the game works: The fear will only disappear or become weaker after you have confronted it.

We often avoid confronting difficult situations because we don’t like to see certain aspects of ourselves and find it difficult to accept all of our facets.

However, the more we dig and discover everything we seek to avoid, the deeper and more satisfying our relationships with things and with others.

So choose not to play the role of the victim anymore, take up the challenge and act! (Techniques on how to better deal with anxiety can be found in this article: Be Brave )

“The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear” Brian Tracy.

3. Follow-up

The likelihood is high that things will not go as you expected them to. Perhaps there was even a setback.

“I could have done better and that too …” — do these thoughts seem familiar to you?

This is normal because we are always smarter in retrospect, but the past cannot be changed. However, what we can do is learn from the past and do better next time.

After you’ve mastered the challenge, take your time and ask yourself what you could have done better, what you’ll do differently next time, and what you’ve learned from this situation.

I also like to talk to a good friend about it, because he perceives the situation more objectively than you.

It is also essential to remain flexible for the future, similar or the same challenges: if one thing does not work as you hope, try something different.

There is no point in trying to get your head through the wall, especially since there is usually a door next to the wall. Work smarter, not harder.

Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are. Bernice Johnson Reagon

How to overcome your biggest challenges

So far, I’ve spent over 11 years living in northern Alberta. But after the fire in 2016, I left Fort Mac to visit a good friend down in Calgary. I found a business opportunity to partner with him.

Accordingly, I accepted the challenge and decided to move to Calgary at the end of 2016.

The move brought me many new challenges:

A move to a new place
A new job with 100% independence
A new environment around me
An unknown environment
And above all many, many new experiences

As you can imagine, my first time in Calgary pushed me to my limits and beyond. I would like to go into more detail on one thing:

To start a new business is a big challenge, you will need enough capital to finance the start-up cost. In my case, it was more than just capital finance. We had to go through the city regulation and approval to get the business permit and license.

It took us more than 6 months due to difficulties we had to overcome with the city business and safety requirements.

After we completed the city requirement and got a business license, we had to start a marketing campaign to attract new business and customers.

We had to approach every company in the area with a business proposal to service their pieces of equipment.

We faced a lot of rejections, but we didn’t give up. We know we had to face the challenges and continue prospecting until we found a company that accepted our business proposal. The deal was to go pick up the equipment from their facility, drive it to the shop, do the maintenance needed and return it back, so it’s ready for use the following business day.

Some times we had to work longer hours to complete the repairs and return the equipment to them.

What I have learned during this business venture is that we always face challenges in life that we did not plan. But instead of resigning, we can also see it as an opportunity for personal development.

We have to learn to understand repeated stresses in life as learning opportunities, to accept them and to develop further.

Do you often ask yourself the following questions:

• Why does that always happen to me?
• Why do I have to fight through such difficulties again and again?
• Why always me?
• When will it finally stop?

As you can see, we are always faced with challenges that we already know in some way. We have the feeling that certain situations repeat themselves. Or we keep coming across people with whom we have similar difficulties.

These processes are no accident. Here, life puts learning opportunities on the doorstep, so to speak, so that we can tackle certain things that we have not yet learned. There is one friend who uses you again and again for their own purposes. Or you have a boss who keeps selling your work as his. Your children may keep showing you that they can’t rely on you yet. Etc..

What learning opportunities are there in these challenges?

All of these events are learning opportunities and show us our own limits. We should also set this clearly here. Because if you don’t finally show your life partner that you don’t let her use you all the time, she may do it with you all her life.

If you don’t think of a strategy for depriving your boss of the ability to sell your services like his, he’ll keep doing it. Maybe at some point, you will change your job in frustration and have a new boss.

And do you know what is likely to happen then? You will probably have a boss again who will sell your work as his or it will be a new colleague or …

Your children will also get on your nerves with unreliability until you set them clear limits.

Tips on how to master the challenges

You can specifically address these “learning opportunities.”

Tip 1: Look closely and feel inside
What is happening right now? What do you think about the situation in question? How are you with the behaviour of your counterpart?

Tip 2: set limits!
Tell your counterpart what you need and want. Trust your opinion and your own point of view.

Tip 3: stick with your decisions!
The first impulse is usually the right one. Negative emotions that come afterwards only pull you back into old behaviour patterns.

Why you should master challenges regularly.

What do you do when you are asked to do a task that exceeds everything you have done so far? Which is a real challenge for you?

But which can also change your life? The choice is yours: you can find an excuse and continue to do only the work or projects you are used to. Of course, this is a very convenient, but above all, a safe setting.

Because if you don’t do anything unusual, nothing can go wrong. You cannot fail but stay on your usual path.

With this attitude, you also miss a lot. If you accept challenges and are constantly confronted with new things, you will learn about them. You gain new experience and remain flexible. You benefit the most yourself.

You will also gain additional confidence when you successfully master new situations. But how do you manage to jump over your shadow and face challenges that you have been reluctant to do so far?

If you feel fear, this is the indicator of growth. And no matter what techniques you use, fear will only go away when you face it.

I am convinced that it is the quality of our life that determines how well we can deal with our fears.

Anxiety can be a prison. But only you decide whether you want to be trapped by these walls.

Every time you face your fears and master challenges, you will become a little bit freer. Besides, your self-confidence will grow, and you will gradually trust yourself more.

Even if you “fail” all along the line, you will very likely still be alive and physically intact afterwards.

This will help your body learn that fears are not that bad, and it will become more relaxed and more comfortable for you to take on and master new challenges over time.

One evening, when I faced another big challenge and mastered it, I was lying in my bed and felt a violent force in me. This force felt something like this: “No matter what comes in my life, somehow I’ll be able to cope with it.”

Even though this feeling had unfortunately disappeared the next morning, I knew that this was true self-confidence.

However, this confidence didn’t come overnight. It was because I have been actively facing and overcoming challenges over and over again for several years.

Accordingly, I am always facing at least one (small) challenge every day.

There is no standstill in life. There is only growth or regression in life. Long deadlock is equivalent to a step backwards because self-confidence — like a muscle that you don’t train for a more extended period — is reduced if you don’t master challenges regularly.

“Learning is like rowing against the current, as soon as you stop, you drift back.” — Chinese wisdom

You need self-discipline if you want to face challenges

There is often one thing between us and the life of our dreams: comfort.

Many people are not willing to do things that are really necessary to achieve their goals. Instead, they look for excuses and kids themselves. They talk to themselves that they “can do it tomorrow” while watching another episode of their favourite series.

This is because, as humans, we tend to do things that are simple and enjoyable instead of the things that may be unpleasant but can make a big difference in our lives.

If you want to master challenges, you won’t be able to avoid overcoming yourself and doing things that feel uncomfortable at first:

• You will face your fears
• You will overcome yourself and invest time in preparation and follow-up
• You will forego various things that you enjoy because they do not fit your goals

For this, you need one thing above all: self-discipline.

Self-discipline is the ability to forego short-term pleasure and instead do the things that offer you a more significant advantage in the long term.

Self-discipline is — if you have the right health — an essential quality for a successful and fulfilled life. Several long-term studies support this assumption. The best-known research on this subject is undoubtedly the Marshmallow Experiment.

Even if you currently have little self-discipline, it doesn’t matter: everyone can learn self-discipline.

Mastering challenges — conclusion

We will always face challenges in our lives. Especially if you want to be successful, you will most likely be able to master many challenges.

A challenge is a demanding job that challenges us. The best way to do this is in three steps:

The action is the most critical point. You won’t get results without effort.

Especially in the preparation, it is essential to overcome your laziness and to do the things that help us to master the challenge successfully.

Follow-up is about asking yourself what could have been done better so that you can do it better next time.

I recommend that you regularly face challenges because this is the only way you and your self-confidence will grow.

So encourage yourself and don’t say “I can’t do it” right away. Instead, see what you can’t do or what doesn’t fully match your abilities as a challenge. Approach the task with the “I’ll try” setting.

Make it clear that you will definitely gain experience and learn to reassess your skills.

You also have the chance to learn new things and improve yourself. If you find that you still do not have all the prerequisites to complete the task, do not be afraid to ask for help.

Ask, find out about what you do not master because that is how you learn.

I hope this article has been able to help you, and you can better master future challenges.

Originally published at https://www.thebrilliance.org on March 2, 2020.