Navigating Challenges

In this episode of the Becoming You podcast, I discuss my mindset and approach to navigating challenges in life, big or small.

Challenges are everywhere and, oftentimes, they come when they are least expected. Obviously, we don’t experience huge, life-altering challenges everyday; but we do tend to run into a number of “micro-challenges” that demand us to step out of our comfort zone, even if just a little.

Because these challenges are often seemingly insignificant (at least in the moment), we deal with the mild frustration we feel by ignoring or dismissing many of these obstacles. Why waste energy that can be best channeled somewhere more productive?

I’m here to encourage you to look at every challenge you encounter, especially those micro-challenges, in a way that may run contrary to what your gut tells you.

If you make a conscious effort to run through the following six steps, I promise that you will gain the ability to turn every problem you face into an opportunity to become a better version of yourself.

Step #1: See the challenge as an opportunity for growth

Something happened to make you not feel great about yourself. You can let that challenge slide and forget it, or you can choose to lean into it and ask yourself, “What can this teach me?”

Why is this important? Because how you choose to respond to challenges compounds over time. Your emotional reactions to anything at all, all build up to the future person you will become.

Step #2: Become aware of the story you tell yourself in the moment.

The most common story we tell ourselves when encountering challenges is that I am a victim to whatever or whoever is giving us a hard time.

Other common stories we tell ourselves amid hardship are: I’m not good enough, or I’m being rejected.

As you can see, it always comes back to some deep-seated, basic need that is not being met.

Step #3: Choose to see the story from their perspective.

The magic that comes out of awareness is that you’re able to immediately take a step back from the drama that is unfolding.

Stop trying to be right. Most of us live our lives trying to prove to ourselves and to others that we are right. Consequently, we fail to see things from anybody else’s perspective but our own.

The thing is, it doesn’t really matter who is “right” and who is “wrong”. Most of the time, conflicts come about simply because of two or more different perspectives.

If you develop the bandwidth to hold more than just your own perspective, it won’t matter to you, either, who is “right” and who is “wrong”.

Step #4: Accept how you are feeling instead of resisting it.

Whenever we feel bad, we immediately try to “fix” that feeling.

What acceptance does is give you the chance to meet that wounded part of yourself. Those wounded parts do not ever ask to be fixed. They ask to be seen.

“Do you see the part of me that feels humiliated?”

“Do you see the part of me that feels small?”

“Do you see the part of me that feels rejected?”

These wounds are screaming to be seen. They just want attention. Meet them with tenderness. Just as we approach a child with a boo-boo with compassion and kiss that boo-boo, we can give those wounded parts of us attention and regard and tell them that everything is okay.

Step #5: Once you see your wound with love, you begin to see it from a whole different vantage point.

Your challenges don’t have to define you. They are just stories from different perspectives that are playing out in front of us.

Step #6: Grab hold of the solutions that begin to show up.

You can’t solve a challenge at the same level it was created. You have to have a different vantage point. You have to be a witness to what is happening. As long as you’re identifying with it, you’re not going to be able to solve it.

You have to be vibrating at a different level for solutions to show up, because the solutions are at a different vibration than the problem.