How to Overcome Challenges

Challenges are the type of character builder that put us in a difficult position.

We want to benefits of what challenges create – strength, perseverance, confidence – but we don’t want to endure the hardships it takes to get there. This is certainly understandable, as our team of challenge speakers can attest.

However, the stories these speakers share reveals one thing – greatness rarely comes without challenges. There’s a good chance that the excellence you seek in your personal and professional life requires that you endure the difficult things.

How will you survive? To answer that, we’ve generated a list of three techniques that help you overcome challenges on the way to greatness.

Feeling Uninspired? Bring a Challenge Into Your Life

In a 2010 article for U.S. News & World Report, contributor Curt Rosengren noted that the best way to tackle a challenge is to welcome them to the point of seeking them out and bringing them into your life.

“You will never fulfil even a fraction of your potential by sticking to the safe and comfortable. Why? Because the safe and comfortable never forces you to rise to the occasion,” Rosengren wrote. “It never offers the resistance that strengthens muscles you didn't know you had.”

These could be temporary challenges or long-term ones. The key is to find something that stretches without, as Rosengren writes, creating a “recipe for disaster.” Here are a few examples from Rosengren’s article:

• Start that new project at work you’ve wanted to do
• Learn a new language during your free time
• Organize a fundraising event for a cause in which you believe
• Pick a mountain and climb it
• Finish a marathon or half-marathon

“The more you challenge yourself and succeed, the greater your confidence in your ability to do it again next time,” he wrote. “It doesn’t just help you grow your skills and knowledge, it helps you grow your belief that you can.”

Challenge Coming? List the Determinants

A challenge is rarely a one-dimensional event. For example, seeking a raise at work isn’t just about asking your boss, “I’d like a 10% raise.” You have to:

• Complete your tasks promptly
• Take on extra work and do it well
• Volunteer for projects
• Arrive early, stay late
• Build relationships with your managers
• Conduct yourself with professionalism

These various factors are what Psychologies magazine calls “determinants”, or additional factors you have to manage that will make or break your success in a challenge.

One of the keys to overcoming a challenge is to list these determinants, the magazine says:

“The more detailed the plan, the greater your chances of success. If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail! Do not leave anything to chance; success is not a chance event.”

Be Present in the Challenge

Our tendency in times of hardship is to look forward to the day when the difficulty is over. Certainly this mindset is warranted with physical ailments and other life situations, but when it comes to situations which stretch us – new position at work, job change – it’s important to be in the moment, the Chopra Center’s Leo Carver says.

“Do not underestimate the power of being present,” Carver writes.

This mentality forces you to examine yourself and your situation in a moment-by-moment rhythm, a rhythm which reveals truth about your situation and who you are.

Developing the practice of being present during challenges is much easier when you ask yourself penetrating questions, Carver wrote:

• Why is this a challenge?
• Do I believe that I am capable of being successful at this challenge?
• What are the possible outcomes if I succeed?
• What is the outcome if I fail?

Connecting the reality of the challenge with your emotions, fears and expectations will help you understand and embrace the challenge.

Final Thoughts About Challenges

Challenges, when handled the right way, can make us better people – stronger, more empathetic and confident.

We know that when hardships come our way, we’ll have the tenacity and awareness to understand them and make it through. And, in doing so, we can have a greater sense of compassion toward others who are struggling through the same things.

Our team of challenge speakers have endured hardships of many types and have come out of them better people. The stories they share aren’t just told to illustrate a point – they are shared as an expression of who they are.

This combination of on-point speaking skills and life experience is what makes Successful Speakers’ keynotes some of the best in the entire country.

Contact us today to find the best challenge speaker for your upcoming conference, convention or after-dinner event.