Through life’s challenges, we need to find growth. Some people try to ignore them. Some try to avoid them even when the avoidance can cause more serious issues. Some people can get through their challenges and wind up at the same baseline – but some people improve from challenges.
- Growth is the goal. See the opportunity to improve. Challenge is the pathway to growth. (“The tougher the challenge, the greater the growth.”) Understand that challenges are what enables us to grow. Ryan Holiday: The Obstacle Is the Way
- HOW to grow after adversity - The Happiness Lab Podcast with Dr. Laurie Santos.
- Rabbi Twerski: Lobsters and Growth. This is Rabbi Twerski's perspective on stress, pressure, and growth. Our growth is almost always uncomfortable.
- "Michael Caine: Use the Difficulty" Actor, Michael Kane, describes how a simple life experience changed his perspective on difficulty.
- TEACHERS and parents are incredibly critical for this “Find the growth opportunity” tactic because research shows that challenges are NOT enough to foster growth. The individual needs to SEE that the challenges can foster growth depending on how he/she approaches the challenge and if he/she views it as an opportunity. The teachers and parents need to illustrate this frequently until it becomes more and more adopted. Even though the growth process will take a long time, just teaching students that growth can come from challenges IF they embrace that reality, will unlock some students’ potential almost immediately. Therefore, parents and teachers can begin talking about this as soon as possible and they WILL make permanent and positive changes in many students right away.
- Someone who needs parents to solve problems and/or find shortcuts, will not have life skills. (The new Parent Handbook goes into greater detail about this.)
- For many students this should lead to cheating becoming personally reprehensible.
- Preparing for a test IS a challenge. Advanced preparation (executive function) – no different than preparing for a big game or concert performance, or musical.
- Navy Seals – Full Benefit: When things go bad, there can be a lesson learned and you are forced to improve. Accept the situation and use it. The Navy Seals “Flip the script” on bad situations.
- Cocoon Story – butterflyThe Butterfly’s Struggle: Cocoon Story (Cutting open the cocoon to “help” the butterfly, renders it useless and it can’t fly. It NEEDS the struggle of ripping out of the cocoon to build strength in its wings.)
- “Everything negative - pressure, challenges - is all an opportunity for me to rise.” Kobe Bryant.
- “No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity, for he is not permitted to prove himself.” Seneca
- “Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.” Seneca
- “When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what the storm is all about.” Haruki Murakami
- “Your hardest times often lead to the greatest moments of your life. Keep going. Tough situations build strong people in the end.” Roy T Bennett
- “There's always going to be a lesson to be learned from whatever it is that you're being exposed to. Things don't come up the way that you thought that they would, or some curveball comes your way, learn from it. You're either a winner, a loser, or a learner. Be a learner.” Maynard James Keenan
- “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.” Ernest Hemingway
- “Devote the rest of your life to making progress.” Epictetus
- "The challenge is to take difficult and painful times and turn them into something beneficial, something that makes you grow." Michelle Akers
- "Can you get past the things that inevitably fall your way? Will you stand up and show us what you're made of? Plenty of people have answered this question in the affirmative and a rarer breed still has shown that they not only have what it takes, but they thrive and rally at every such challenge that the challenge makes them better than if they never faced the adversity at all." Ryan Holiday
- “The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times. The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Action Questions:
- How can I view my current challenges as opportunities for personal growth and development?
- What skills or qualities can I develop or strengthen through overcoming my challenges?
- How can I reframe my perspective to see challenges as pathways to growth rather than obstacles?