There are 16 posts tagged Challenge (this is page 1 of 1).
In a strong storm, even the trees eventually give up and come crashing down.
But if they were more nimble—if they could uproot themselves and lay down or if they could flex like a blade of grass—they'd live forever.
When your patience is tested and you feel ready to break, stubbornly challenging your adversary is rarely the solution.
Instead of being a victim, embrace the winds of change as an observer, as a blade of grass dancing with the wind.
When I talk about following my heart and doing what feels right it may sometimes sound like life becomes a cakewalk, an easy and sunny path you walk down without a care in the world.
The reality couldn't be further from the truth.
Your heart wants you to grow, to be challenged, to face difficulties that seem insurmountable. It wants to nudge you closer and closer to the edge of oblivion, to hold your hand when you're unable to walk and then slowly let it go, challenging you to walk on your own.
It does this with love, the same way a mother holds her child's hand as she's learning to walk, guiding the her to grow to new heights and new potential, encouraging the child to risk what seems like everything, and doing so because the mother knows through experience that falling is part and parcel of living.
But not all difficulty is created equal and not all challenge is meaningful.
It's difficult to climb a hundred stairs, but the meaningfulness of that difficulty changes dramatically when you're climbing those hundred stairs to save someones life. You can climb stairs all day and night and they won't mean as much as that one sprint to save a life.
It might be stressful to manage a team of people and tackle a big project, but the meaningfulness of that project and the worthiness of that stress changes dramatically when the project you're taking on is aimed at accomplishing a goal that, when reached, changes someones life for the better or leaves the world in a better state than you found it.
No matter how many meaningless projects you accept and no matter how many pointlessly stressful situations you face, you can be sure that neither are making you a better person. They're not helping you grow and they're not helping the world become a better place, no matter how much pain you endure.
Your ego wants you to believe that all challenge and difficulty has meaning, that all sources of stress have value and purpose. Your heart intuitively knows that this isn't true. It knows that without spending your time doing things that actually have meaning and purpose behind them, you have no reason for existing.
Your heart is allergic to things that are meaningless, so wear your heart on your sleeve. Put it right out there for the whole world to see. Let it guide you. Let it take you wherever it takes you. Trust it no matter how risky or how illogical it may seem. A true heart calling will always bring you to a place that's worthy of the challenges you face.
If you follow your heart, if you give it your trust and let it guide you, it will lead you to your purpose for existing. Life won't be easy. You won't get through unscathed. You'll fall down and face challenges that seem insurmountable, but every single challenge you do face, every fall and every scratch, will be worth it. It will be meaningful.
If you follow your heart, every challenge you face will make you a better person and for that you'll grow to love your life.
In The Laziness Paradox, Scott Young writes about something that I've always had a hard time putting a finger on: why short-term estimations often fail and long-term plans often turn out to be inadequate.
I believe optimism, hope, ambition and all that general self-help pabulum work best as far beliefs. That is, being overconfident works best when it is a generalized ideal you use to think about the long future, not when you're planning your to-do list tomorrow.
The truth is, most people make two errors in their judgement. They are overly optimistic in the short-term, because inherent overconfidence and the illusion of control convince them they can achieve more than they can. But people are also too unimaginative about the future--we tend to imagine the future as mostly resembling the present.
I suggest two cures: first, acknowledge your short-term laziness more. If you know you're lazy, you can work around it. Most people don't because we like to think of ourselves as being industrious and in control, not easily manipulated automatons. Second, be more imaginative about the future, even small ripples can turn into big waves over time.
I often allow my imagination to run wild when thinking about the future. I really do think anything is possible. I believe that civilian trips to a colony on Mars will occur in my lifetime. I believe that the standard of living for all human beings can be vastly improved within my lifetime.
But while dreaming and believing in those dreams are big first steps, they're not enough. How to act in a way that works towards them is arguably the more challenging task.
Have you ever repeated a word to yourself so many times that you begin to notice the strangeness of the sound it makes? The repetition begins to conceal the meaning of the word, so you notice what it actually sounds like.
I’ve found the same thing happens the more you learn about a subject. As you burrow in, the surface layers of common sense peel away until you’re left with something stranger.
Strangeness is a good thing. It means you’ve ventured into new territory, where opportunities can be found and falsehoods shed. I’d say my goal in learning anything is to try to find this zone of strangeness.
In a recent blog post, Scott Young writes about something that I've experienced for as long as I can remember, that point where a repeated word suddenly seems to change.
I've also noticed this happen when doing a repetitive task: I feel the task becoming so automatic that I can almost forget about it, but then something strange happens and I start screwing up, as if the task became more challenging right when I was getting used to it.
I found Scott's point about how we can use this sudden strangeness to guide our learning quite thought-provoking and the full blog post is definitely worth a read.
Vic Phillips invited me to contribute to a post he was putting together called '20 Ways to Engage in DIY Health and Lifestyle Change – Advice from Digital Thinkers'. I'm including my contribution below, but please check out the full post for lots of other great advice.
If you desire lifestyle change, envision what your life would look like today if you were already living that change. Instead of working from the outside in — instead of thinking about how much your current lifestyle needs to change to get where you want to be — work from the inside out. What would the changed you do today? How would that person act, think, and behave?
Imagine your entire life instantly transformed, all your ambitions, goals, and dreams fully realized. What might you then consider important? How would that person look back at the you of today and what advice might you offer yourself? Now using that perspective, ask yourself what you can do today to step towards that lifestyle. You might discover that what previously felt like insurmountable challenges suddenly feels almost trivial.
When was the last time you felt compelled to do something or to change a decision or make a choice that would affect a previously envisioned outcome? When was the last time your own thoughts presented you with the option to overrule yourself?
What action did you take? Did you take any action at all, or did you just listen and then push aside those rebellious, troublemaking thoughts?
I catch myself at times ignoring my inner voice and 'sticking with what I know' because what I know offers a clear outcome, a previously fleshed out series of actions and reactions, a 'plan' that I had previously set in motion and committed to following through with until the end.
But then from nowhere a rebel appears. It starts as a whisper of a thought, easily snuffed out and put in its rightful place in one fell swoop. I return to being sure of myself, confident that my life is in order and that I know where I'm going and what I'm doing.
But then it comes back again, stronger and louder this time, more persistent and sure of itself. It seems to be trying to tell me that my vision of the future is no longer in alignment with what's real, as if it was privy to a bit of information about what lies ahead.
These inner rebels are easy to ignore. They rise up and rebel for seemingly no sensible reason at all, as if their only purpose for rebelling was for the sake of rebelling.
Self-doubt and fear are common rebels that attempt to start a revolution at the intersection of every big decision, every life-changing opportunity.
I've become accustom to the little rebels showing up when I've committed to something, but I'm also learning to cooperate with them, to hear them out and listen to what they have to say.
In doing this I've discovered that all inner rebels are not made equal. Some of them actually have valuable information and practical arguments to present.
Eight months ago I made the mental commitment to hike the Appalachian Trail for my 30th birthday. Hiking the trail is something I've wanted to do since I first learned about it as a child.
I now had the freedom in my life to undertake such an adventure and I was feeling the need for an extended period of exposure to raw nature. In every way, this decision made a lot of sense.
For the next six months I woke up every day thinking about how I would soon be waking up in a tent on the trail, looking forward to spending the entire day hiking in nature. It was an exhilarating thought and every day I felt more motivated than the previous.
However, there were two unforeseeable events that took place during those six months: My sister became pregnant with her second child and a few months after that I was offered a job doing online community support for a WordPress plugin (money has been tight since I quit my job two years ago, and this was the ultimate location-independent opportunity).
My sister never asks me for anything, so when she asked me to be there for the birth of my niece, I knew that I couldn't say no.
The inner rebels appeared shortly after each of these events, but I took care of them. I wasn't going to let their rebelliousness affect my decision to do something that I've always wanted to do.
I could still make the AT hike work out: I'd just fly back in late April when my niece is born and then return and continue the trail.
For my new job, I'd bring a solar panel, a laptop, and a mobile data card so that I could get online every evening and work for a few hours. I'd make the entire adventure a big experiment and document five months of working online and hiking the Appalachian Trail.
As the start date of March 20th grew closer, I found myself building a routine of taking daily walks in the local state forest, walking for several hours and imagining myself already on the trail.
I spent a lot of time creating the mental attitude that would be necessary to spend 8-10 hours a day for 4-5 months hiking outside.
In the process, more rebels appeared. They seemed to come from every direction, vying for my attention and getting louder and more restless with each passing day.
Amongst the chaos there was one rebel who stood out from the rest. He seemed calm and collected and spoke from a place of serenity. In the process of dealing with the inner turmoil of the other rebels, I was attracted to this rebel. I wanted to know how he was so calm and sure of himself.
We met in a place away from the rest, a quiet and peaceful meeting spot, and I listened with an open mind and an open heart.
"The world has changed since you decided to hike the AT. It no longer looks like the world you envisioned when you made that decision."
"What do you mean?"
"If you hike the Appalachian Trail now, you'll need to interrupt your hike to come back to visit your sister. You've always wanted your first hike to be a true thru-hike, a non-stop hike from start to finish. You're compromising that principal by trying to juggle your envisioned world-view with that of what the world is actually turning out to look like."
Everything was starting to make sense now.
"Your new job gives you certain responsibilities that require you to be online at least every weekday; what would happen if you can't get Internet access on the trail? The risk of being unable to fulfill your responsibilities would create inner conflict that would prevent you from enjoying the hike. In fact, not only would you not enjoy the hike, you wouldn't enjoy the job either as it would feel like the source of this conflict."
This rebel was right. In my attempt to hold onto the way I envisioned the future, I was ignoring the obvious: The time was no longer right and as a result, my heart was no longer in it.
This wasn't a rebel of self-doubt or fear; he was the rebel of my heart watching out for me, trying to save me from doing something that was no longer in alignment with my soul.
I believe our soul speaks to us when we're ready to listen. It won't speak in a loud and obnoxious tone. It won't push and shove and jump up and down until we notice it like all the other rebels. It will sit calmly and speak from a place of peace and tranquility. It knows what's real and only wants the best for us.
This why I feel meditation is so important (and why I'm working to develop a regular meditation habit): By creating inner peace and calming our mind, we can hear our heart and soul; the windshield of our intuition becomes clear and we're able to see what's ahead without all the bugs of doubt and fear splattered all over the place.
When the rebel of your heart speaks, invite it to a peaceful place, sit down, and listen.
In a recent letter, Sandra Pawula writes about being wary of simply accepting easily dispensed advice:
I will - at times - be counter the counter-culture. But not because I actively ascribe to the traditional mores. I know it's all in earnest and who am I to judge. But sometimes, I find it hard to swallow too easily dispensed advice in the new standard of 160 characters.
A "wisdom" tweet recently advised, "Don't work a job that is too small for your spirit."
I replied, "If your spirit is big, is there a job that is too small?"
For most of my life, I've only written and shared things post-experience and post-reflection. When I started this journal, I did so with the intention of giving myself a platform from which I could share my experiences and reflections with you as they were happening. However, I gravely underestimated just how difficult that would be.
I've learned that when I'm traveling -- when I'm opening myself to new experiences and spending time in deep reflection -- it's extremely challenging to create and share from that space of exploration. Only after I've processed and reprocessed experiences, stories, and conversations do I feel comfortable sharing them.
But maybe that's my problem: maybe I'm too comfortable.
I tell myself that I'm remaining true to myself by sharing only when I'm ready to share and writing only when I feel compelled to write, but maybe I'm confusing truth with comfort and fear with patience.
One of my journal subscribers recently cancelled her subscription because she felt I wasn't publishing frequently enough. My first thought was fear-based. "What if more people start canceling? Oh, no! I should publish something immediately!"
But then I stepped back and looked at the situation objectively.
My idea of "frequently enough" is not the same as everyone else. This particular subscriber publishes her own work far more frequently than I'm comfortable with; in fact it's too frequently for me.
My enough is not her enough and that's okay; I shouldn't chase her enough and abandon my own (which can happen quite easily if we're operating from fear).
As I realized this, I also began asking myself if my recent low publishing frequency was really the result of 'remaining true to myself', or if I was in fact creating excuses and succumbing to fear and resistance.
If we don't get uncomfortable on a regular basis, growth will stagnate. It's comfortable to lay down and relax on a plateau, but scaling the next mountain and climbing to the next peak should make us sweat. We need to sweat.
(Discomfort and pain are not the same thing; I don't believe pain is necessary, but all growth requires some level of discomfort because growth challenges the natural decay of things.)
At the beginning of this year I conducted a short experiment where I published to the journal every day for ten days straight. It was an uncomfortable but empowering experiment. In conclusion I surmised that I had overcome any previous resistance to publishing here.
It's clear to me now that resistance is still very present and I have much work ahead of me; I need to get uncomfortable.
***
Travel Notes
I began a road trip almost two weeks ago and while I have been keeping notes on various experiences and conversations, I haven't been publishing much more than a few short thoughts.
I've always told myself that I don't like writing about travel from a travel writers perspective. "I'm not a travel writer", I would tell myself over and over. And while it's true that I don't enjoy writing long essays about travel, as a traveler I inevitably make observations as I explore and move around.
I'm realizing now that my aversion to being called a 'travel writer' has been holding me back from recording and sharing these observations (talk about a self-limiting belief).
Starting with this road trip I'm going to start sharing my 'Travel Notes' through the Notes section. You can expect several such travel notes to arrive in your inbox tomorrow morning.
Chris Guillebeau reflects on how he once chased a "proper education", striving for things simply because the path from here to there was clear and easily marked out by milestones that many others had followed.
It took me a long time to get away from validating my life according to something that didn't relate to my true hopes and goals. At the time, I really did want to devote years of my life doing things that no one would notice, in hopes of obtaining letters behind my name that no one would care about. As ridiculous as I knew it was, I still wanted it! It was hard to let go of... until I finally did.
Part of it was the attachment to something of questionable value (a degree, useless letters), but I was also attracted to the linear nature of academia. I wanted to do something interesting and meaningful, and I saw a clear, if not entirely sensible path. Never mind that the end was muddled; at least I had a certain next step. Pay this amount of money, write a certain number and type of essays, complete such-and-such requirements, meet with these advisors, and so on. All fairly straightforward.
But when you venture out on your own, the next step is often unclear. You don't necessarily know what to do at any given time, which is why having a specific direction is a superpower. There is also no degree or graduation waiting for you at the end, and you have to determine your own milestones.
...
Years later, I write these notes while sitting in a hotel lobby in Tajikistan, a place I had never heard of back then. I fly around the world and work on projects I find meaningful. I have no qualifications to do much of anything, yet for the most part I do whatever I want.
I realize now it wasn't so much the acceptance or rejection of academia, an institution that may very well serve other people's needs more than mine. It was the rejection of defining myself according to exterior standards, a system that was rigged to reward conformity by design.
How often do we give up the things that make sense in return for things that are less ambiguous? Clarity might make our day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month lives easier to plan and easier to predict, but are we really growing and learning and challenging ourselves if everything we do has been done a thousand times before?
My highlights from Joel Runyon's Impossible Manifesto:
Some time between our teenage years and adulthood, people strip away the possibilities from us. We're told what we can do and what we can't do. What's possible and what's not.
We're made to believe what we should do and what's simply irresponsible. Somewhere along the line, we forget that we control a lot of things.
It's your life. You get to decide what happens. There are a million different influences around you every day trying to get you to buy into what you "should" do, but ultimately you really can do whatever you want.
You get to write your story.
***
Are you telling a good story with your life? The emphasis is on the word "good", because whether you like it or not, you're telling a story. No matter what you do, with each decision you make, you're writing your story every day.
Whether your story is an adventure-filled page-turner or more boring than a 50-year-old-textbook is up to you. But, you get to decide.
***
When you want something, make sure you want something worthwhile.
Because eventually you are going to have to fight for it.
And it better be worth it.
***
Wanting to live vicariously through others takes relatively little effort. You can sit back and watch TV or scan the Internet, reading about people doing interesting things with the click of a button. But, because there's little effort involved, there's little conflict.
There's also little reward and little meaning.
The more worthwhile the cause, the more Impossible it tends to be. The more Impossible something tends to be, the more conflict the character invites in. But the more conflict the character invites in, the larger the story arc becomes and the more potential it has to suck you in because it's so compelling.
***
Living a good story is an amazing reward by itself.
Even if nobody knows what you're doing, you're enriching your life by immersing it in a story. Instead of having arbitrary goals and accomplishments, by living a great story, you create narrative for them. A context. A purpose.
Instead of just crossing stuff off a list, you're experiencing a story. You're living an adventure. One that's worth writing about.
One that's definitely worth living.
***
The really great stories are about pushing the limits and seeing what is possible. Not stopping ahead of time because the challenges seem too great, but rather pushing forward exactly BECAUSE they seem so daunting. You see a massive conflict ahead, but realize that victory is just going to be that that much sweeter.
***
When you start to challenge what's Impossible you begin to realize a whole new world of things that aren't actually Impossible. They only represent the limitations of other people's imaginations.
Once you've shot through the limits that are placed on you by other people, you begin to realize that there are still things beyond your limits that now seem within reach. So you keep going and going and keep discovering new so-called "Impossible things" that are now somehow doable.
Every time you challenge the Impossible, you gain a new understanding of what is actually possible.
You realize how small a world you had created for yourself with your own self-imposed limitations in the past. And how big of a future is possible. Pretty soon, even the most ridiculous things in the world don't seem out of reach if you really want to achieve them.
***
It's hard to imagine owning your own business when you're stuck working at UPS getting chased by dogs in the snow. It's hard to imagine running a marathon when you can barely jog a mile without heaving up a lung. It's hard to imagine traveling the world when you haven't even been out of the state.
You have to gain perspective.
***
It's hard to make huge jumps sometimes and imagine yourself in a completely different world living a completely different life than you are now. But that's because of your perspective. Your current perspective colors your subjective version of reality.
Push the boundaries of Impossible and you'll see that it expands. Keep pushing and you'll see that your subjective version or what's possible isn't as accurate as you think it is. The boundaries of the Impossible are constantly expanding. So keep pushing them.
***
Do something. I said this earlier but it bears repeating. The easiest way to confuse the feelings of accomplishment with the feelings of inspiration is to forget what accomplishment feels like. If you've accomplished something recently and remember what it feels like, the lure of watching someone else do something isn't nearly as attractive.
***
No one will live your life story for you. No one will make your life one worth reading about for you. No one will challenge what's possible with your life for you.
No one that is...except for you.
***
Chances are, you probably already know what you need to do. That thing you have in the back of your mind. That thing that gets you excited about life. That thing that keeps you up at night, but you're scared to try because everything might fall apart. That's the thing you need to do most.
***
The need for courage
The great myth of fear is that you overcome it. Fear isn't a barrier and it isn't something that you overcome. It's simply a constant.
You don't learn to get over fear. You learn to coexist with it and press on anyways, in the midst of it's presence.
That's why you need courage.
Courage allows you to look fear dead in the eye and tell fear to suck it.
People who do great things don't have an absence of fear. They have an abundance of courage, which allows them to do the Impossible, in spite of the fact that they're scared out of their mind.
***
It isn't all about you. Lots of people have lived great stories, but the ones that have the most impact are the ones where the authors look back to see how they can help other people tell great stories as well.
You can download the full manifesto for free over here: Impossible Manifesto.
