How To Handle Challenges Successfully

I wrote previously about how to get rid of your fear of failure.

In that post, I mentioned having unrealistic time frames, unrealistic journey expectations, and negatively identifying with setbacks and challenges.

So today, let me share some more info on how to actually handle challenges successfully.

I believe how you well you handle challenges can be boiled down to 3 factors:

1. Definition Of Challenge
2. Questions You Ask
3. Growth

DEFINITION OF CHALLENGE

For most people, challenges are the absolute worst.

Now, I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that challenges don’t affect me negatively. They do. But it no longer affects for weeks, months, or years at a time.

In fact, one of the biggest challenges I’ve had in my early years was making more money than I ever did… and then losing it all. When that happened, I spent nearly 2 years feeling sorry for myself and not moving forward.

Nowadays, that doesn’t happen. Challenges, while they may affect me at first, don’t affect me negatively for long.

And that’s because I’ve changed the definition of what challenges mean to me.

In my early years, I defined challenges as something career-ending, life-ruining, and so on.

The point is: my previous definition of a challenge positioned my mind to feel failure and give up.

Now, instead, I position challenges in a way that makes me look for opportunities, the lessons, and how to move forward… so I don’t get stuck facing this problem now, or ever again.

The way to do that is to change your definition or meaning of what challenges mean to you.

For me, I believe that everyone is truly limitless. We literally can create anything through our minds and output. And I see challenges as a way to help me realize this.

Every single new challenge now is just testing how much I can express my unlimited potential. So if I face a challenge, I want to see how I can overcome it and express my unlimited potential.

This leads to my next point.

QUESTIONS YOU ASK

I mentioned something similar to this before, which is… the questions you ask yourself will determine your action.

If you ask poor questions like… “Why am I such a failure?”… Well, then, you’re going to come up with poor answers.

The point: Don’t ask questions that lead you back to focusing on your problem.

Don’t ask questions that keep you stuck.

You must, instead, ask things like…

• “What choices did I make led to this to happen?”…
• “How can I avoid doing making these poor choices in the future?”…
• “What can I learn from this? And how is this actually good for me?”…
• “Who has solved the problem I’m facing?”…
• “How can I implement a similar solution to solve my own problems?”

The point: Ask questions that get you thinking of possibility, unlimited potential, opportunity, solutions, movement forward.

Again, great questions first come from how you define what a challenge is. If a challenge means “life-ruining” to you, well then you’ll probably ask questions that lead nowhere. So change your definition first, then ask questions that get you moving.

GROWTH

Next, I believe you must have the belief that if you’re constantly growing then you, by default, will experience a never-ending list of challenges.

The very definition of growth is “gradual increase”.

So if you plan on growing your wealth… then by default, you will also gradually increase your amount of new experiences. And with these new experiences you’ll encounter challenges you haven’t before.

Think of it this way: Let’s say you want to grow your living space so you move into a new mansion.

The good experiences you find include more living room space, more amenities, and so on.

The new challenges you experience include cleaning. How are you going to clean it? What furniture are you going to buy to fill up the space? How will you organize it? Design it? Set it all up technically? How long will it take you to move around your home and get things done?

The point is: If you’re just experiencing the same problems over and over… well then you are probably not growing. And conversely, if you are experiencing new problems then you are growing.

Just being alive implies growth, not stagnation.

Remember my definition of challenges… to express my unlimited potential… so if that’s the case, I’m going to have to experience more and more newer problems (and solve them) in order to see exactly how I can express my unlimited potential.