Life would be a lot easier without obstacles. But challenges are an inevitable – and sometimes necessary – part of life. Learning to deal with challenges is an integral ingredient in building an amazing life.
Society would have us believe that challenges must be slayed like a dragon since, we are told, if we did not have challenges our lives would be perfect. However, challenges aren’t all negative. They can offer incredible new perspectives and assist in developing or practicing new skills.
The same tactics for dealing with challenges can be repurposed for reaching amazing goals. That’s because a big part of success is your ability to tackle larger and larger challenges. Learning to deal with small challenges is a way to successfully deal with larger challenges. Aristotle called the quality by which a responsible individual makes an accurate intuitive decision “phronesis.” I think a more colloquial translation is “wisdom” (which is different to intelligence). Phronesis can only be learned by making a series of progressively larger decisions for which the decider is personally responsible.
When you deal with challenges in the right way, you develop tougher skin and a certain kind of grit. Unfortunately, many people prefer to dream about a smooth path to success. Parents are notorious for this kind of backwards thinking. They (understandably) want their kids to be comfortable, but don’t realize it will be bad in the long run for a child’s career if they aren’t exposed to constructive feedback and criticism early and often when they are young. Rather than shield children from challenges, it is far better if they are exposed to obstacles where the consequences are low and they can learn how to navigate them.
Challenges come in all shapes and sizes. There are physical challenges, emotional challenges, challenges from the past, knowledge gaps and unavoidable challenges, all of which come with both an internal and external component. We are advised to live without limits and told that anything is possible. But the truth is, most things in life are not possible. You can’t get from LA to NYC in one hour, football players cannot play a game every day and nobody can stay awake for five days straight.
So, why we pretend we can live life without limits?
Overcoming Obstacles
Is it necessary to beat down every obstacle with a stick? Although I succeeded despite my physical and psychological challenges, I never really felt I overcame my disability. I still experience the effect of my disability every day. Sometimes it bothers me, but most of the time I just deal with it.
I am not alone in this situation. Everybody has a type of lingering obstacle that will never fully go away or which ebbs and flows over time. Quite often, these perennial challenges have little to do with you as an individual. For example, an entrepreneur must learn to deal with the unpredictable economy, finding new customers, keeping up with trends, following regulations, retaining staff and all the details of daily business. Every goal will present different challenges at each stage in the process. Using parents as an example again, the challenges of a newborn baby will be wildly different to those of caring for a toddler, kindergartener, pre-teen or an adult. Challenges don’t go away; they just evolve over time.
Reaction
How we react to challenges will define the type of success we have. But it’s not always as simple as that, either. Some people love a good challenge while others can’t seem to catch a break. Equally, some will deal with seriously insurmountable challenges through their journey and still achieve success despite the pressure while others seem to have a smoother road but still end up whining about the little things.
Limitations Perspective
If you choose to see limitations as stop signs, they will be. Furthermore, if you are quick to see every tiny bit of discomfort as an obstacle, then they will become so. Maintaining proper perspective is key to dealing with challenges.
In computer games, it is commonly known that if the player spots a bad guy, then he is going in the right direction. That’s a great perspective for thinking about challenges in your own life. Rather than avoiding obstacles, you should be open to engaging with them to uncover any lessons they may hold for your journey. My disability gave me a unique perspective on life. It limited my overall opportunities and forced me to create a career conducive to my disability. But this change of perspective didn’t stop me from achieving success. If you know how to collect lessons from your challenges, you will create more opportunities in the future. Limitations are not stop signs. They are arrows point you in new directions.
Perhaps the biggest and most common self-imposed limitation is that we try to make sense of our past. Often, the world is so complicated that there is simply no comprehensible reason why one thing happens, and why other things didn’t happen. Even when we can clearly point to a cause for an obstacle, the mistake is to let the past dictate our next move. And instead of admitting we are wrong, we will instead try to redo the past so we feel like we have more control over our challenges. It is often better to let history fade into the background and concentrate on the path ahead.
Let me also offer a new perspective on limitations. Sometimes, it can be good to introduce limitations into your life to force us onto the right path. Things like shopping lists prevent us from buying unhealthy food, agendas help guide meetings and avoiding certain social situations can be great for people struggling with addiction. Governments understand that speed limits help prevent unsafe driving. At some level, we all know the promises of a limitless society is not good for anybody.
Downside of Strengths
Newton’s Third Law of Motion could be reframed in that every strength comes with an equal and opposite limitation. If a company hires a star salesperson, that star will probably bring their own sales approach as well. A visionary entrepreneur might have trouble focusing on the details. I live in California, and while we have amazing weather, the state also has a high tax rate. Simply put, every opportunity has its own downside.
Limitation Payoff
Consider that every successful person you know has found success because they correctly dealt with many challenges in ways that eventually paid off handsomely. Oprah was told she was too emotional, Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple and then came back to develop the iPhone and Sir Richard Branson has dyslexia but still managed to get into space. I used my disability to observe and write about mindset. In other words, dealing correctly with limitations can have enormous payoff in the long run.
How To Deal With Challenges
One way to deal with a challenge is to weave it into your normal process. For example, a good way to deal with road traffic is to leave a little earlier in the morning. I must weave the limitations of my disability into every decision I make, creating extra time, extra money and other factors to cope better. This is important because some challenges never fully go away.
But there are other ways of dealing with challenges:
- Accept reality. Reality will always remain undefeated, so it is best to reconcile yourself with the truth. Be honest your situation but acceptance does not require being in love with your situation. It drives me crazy to ask for help so often, but that is my reality more than a few times each week. Acceptance simply means acting on whatever needs to be done to improve your life, even the uncomfortable bits. Life is always changing and when it does, there will be new challenges.
- Engage with others. Asking others for help can be a great way to deal with challenges. Without anybody to help me, I could not type long documents, eat, or even get out of the house. Search out the people who can help you solve whatever challenge you may have. They are out there, waiting for you to ask.
- Weave your challenges into your goals. Limitations or obstacles may be real but letting them dictate your goals is not the way to success. A working parent must find a way to navigate their work and home obligations. A person with anxiety must apportion time to manage their emotions. This is not the same as compromising, it is more about learning how to cooperate within your limitations.
- Change your focus. If I focused on everything I could not do, I would be in despair. So, I prioritize focusing my energy on writing, my children, my wife, my friends and my wonderful parents. Gratitude is not just a feel-good concept. It is a transformative principle of success. Your challenges certainly need attention. However, by constantly scanning the world for problems and negativity, you will become jaded and fail to see opportunities or real joy in your life.
- Prevention. As Sun Tsu once said, the best way to deal with challenges is to prevent them from occurring in the first place. In the same way, it is possible to prevent most diseases by eating and living in a healthy manner. This sounds simple, but where many people falter is by putting the desires of today ahead of what may be necessary for preventing challenges from appearing tomorrow.
Conclusion
Limitations and challenges are a normal part of any amazing journey. Obstacles aren’t all bad, and sometimes can help mold you into a better, more confident person. It may be tempting to wish for an obstacle-free life, but that’s all it would be: a wish. It is unwise to blame any lack of success solely on our challenges because they can always be dealt with. Instead, change your perspective about challenges and use them to become do something bigger and better. Make your challenges work for you rather than allow them to hold you back.
