What challenges do you face, and how are you dealing with them? Here are a few challenge-related posts you may have missed. Click on the link to read the full post.
“I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.”
“Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.”
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J.K. Rowling conceived the idea for the highly successful Harry Potter series while on a train from Manchester to London in 1990. At the time, she was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International. Over the course of the next seven years, her mother died, her first marriage ended in divorce, and she and her young child lived in relative poverty, subsisting on state benefits, until she finished the first book in the series.
Five years later, she became a multi-millionaire.
She was the runner-up for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, noted for the social, moral, and political inspiration she brought to her fans. Today, she supports numerous charities.
Where and how can you use life’s biggest challenges and difficulties as the foundation to take your life to the next level?
How can you support others in your world to do the same?
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If you are a fan of old John Wayne movies, you may have seen the 1969 film, True Grit. The word “grit” is used a good deal these days, to point out the value and need for greater courage, bravery, determination, and personal fortitude in a world many believe is getting soft.
Far too many people want to take an elevator to the top rather than climbing the stairs to reach their most cherished and valued goals.
Where is it appropriate—or better yet, necessary—to demonstrate your personal strength and grit, by winking at the challenges you face?
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When I started my coaching career many years ago, my wife Wendy gave me the gift of a customized license plate that reads “I Coach.” Over the years it has become a conversation starter, with people often asking me what sport I coach.
This leads to a discussion of my role as a business and personal coach. Recently, I noticed that in all these years I have never coached a professional or even top amateur athlete.
This means that there have also been no actual mountain climbers, but we all climb metaphorical mountains every day. Surprisingly, the bigger and more daunting the climb, the more satisfied and rewarded we feel when we reach the summit.
What challenging projects or goals are you pursuing these days? How can you more fully experience the growth satisfaction along the way as well as the wonderful views when you reach the top?
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Take a moment to look back over your life to examine some of the most significant lessons you have learned.
Who were the people who influenced or participated in these experiences? Some were probably parents, teachers, or bosses with a bit of an abrasive nature that “smoothed” a few of your edges.
What challenging experiences are grating on you these days? Which of them may simply be a gift in disguise, because of its sandpaper packaging?
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What are some of the physical signs you experience when you take on a new challenge, go outside your comfort zone, and bite off more than you can chew?
Is it butterflies in your stomach? Cold sweats, a pounding heart, or a general feeling of fear and foreboding?
What do you do when you have these feelings?
Herb Caen suggest we embrace the lessons and accompanying wisdom provided by the circumstances, rather than retreating.
Where in your personal or professional worlds can you start taking bigger bites out of life’s apple to capture even more nuggets of wisdom?
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What areas of your personal or professional life would you most like to change for the better? How long have you wanted these changes in your life? If your answer is “far longer than I care to admit,” a new approach will be required.
The New Year is just around the corner and a high percentage of people will be looking to resolve or achieve far more this time around.
One key to this success is to choose only a small number of challenging objectives that will cause you to stretch and grow, and to garner many more social and structural sources of support to virtually guarantee your success.
List one or two challenging goals for the New Year. Display them in multiple places in your personal and professional worlds. Solicit the rigorous support of a coach, mentor, family member, or friend, who will not give up on you to assure the lasting changes and results you desire.
Once this has occurred, select another priority goal and repeat the process, to have your best year yet!
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There are two primary schools of thought regarding what spurs people into action. The first is what I call the “avoiding pain” strategy, in which people examine the bad things that may occur if they don’t take action. Some sales methods take advantage of this approach by turning up the level of pain in order to compel people to buy a product or service.
The alternative strategy, suggested in Nelson Mandela’s statement, could be called the “pleasure strategy.” Here, a compelling and hopeful objective mobilizes us to choose certain actions and behaviors that will help us realize our desirable future.
What will you do to make the majority of your life choices—personally and professionally—from a more hopeful perspective?
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A characteristic shared by many of the most successful people is their ability to delay gratification in order to achieve their most highly desired objectives.
In the late 60s/early 70s Stanford University psychologist Walter Mischel did a study in which children ages four to six were given the choice between one marshmallow provided immediately, or two marshmallows if they waited for 15 minutes. In follow-up studies, the researchers found that those who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes.
What disciplined actions, behaviors, and habits must you develop in order to resist short-term wants so that you can realize your most cherished and valued priorities?
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For most people I work with as a coach, life is difficult, challenging, and often upsetting from time to time. Some are so stuck or stopped that they can hardly see any path forward.
During these times, feelings run high and the “emotional tension” they experience as part of their current reality must be acknowledged fully so they can cry the rivers that are appropriate. Only then can they collect themselves to realize that life goes on. Building bridges to the future is now the job at hand, to realize their resolve and get on the other side of life’s barriers and obstacles.
How can you fully acknowledge and experience all the emotions associated with some of your most significant challenges? How can you use that wisdom to garner the strength and capacities to build bridges and get over situations on your life journey?