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Friendly or Frightening?

Most of us find certain challenges in life frightening and do our best to avoid them, while others we face without fear and actually relish the experience.

This particular paradox within myself, was one of which I have always been acutely aware. In some situations I was paralyzed with fear, while in others I seemed to possess this insane (by the standard of others) streak within me that looked forward to the challenge and everything it would bring.

Perhaps it was a way to test myself, to stretch and use all that I’d learned or perhaps it was the invigorating feeling of really being in life that I would occasionally experience from cheerfully facing an obstacle that had presented itself within my world. Whatever it was, I knew that in certain circumstances I could actually be revitalized by the things just popping into my experience.

Eventually I began to see a pattern in the positive challenges I was having and learned to map out those aspects of the situation that created those feelings for me, this evolved into a practice that I will share with you below.

4 Steps to Turning Challenges into Opportunities

1) Adopt an attitude of curiosity

One of the first differences I noticed about my two ways of experiencing challenges was an attitude of curiosity.

In my positive experiences, there was a chance in my mind that this might turn into something fun. When this attitude of curiosity was present, I would play hide and seek with this idea which generated a lot of excitement. When I started looking, I always found something worth further exploration and this shaped the experience into one I wanted to have.

Playing with curiosity allowed me to understand that my frightening experiences surrounding being challenged were often rooted in a belief that I had no choice about the situation in front of me, in my positive experiences I moved away from that belief by getting interested in and investigating, what was on my path.

2) Become the student of your life

The second thing I noticed was that I was suffering under the common affliction known as SHAME…(S)hould (H)ave (A)lready (M)astered (E)verything! And in this one, I was in very good company.

A frequent frustration I had surrounding challenges was the silly idea that I shouldn’t have found it challenging, or in other words I should have already mastered the situation! If I had already mastered it, it wouldn’t be much of a challenge! So where is the growth in that???

I found a more useful frame was to allow myself to be the student of my own life…I am here to learn, evolve, change and ultimately grow in many ways all at once. Challenges are a wonderful pathway to growth…when taking on the student of my own life frame, I asked the challenge what it had come to teach me.

3) Expand your comfort zone

This was a big one. I discovered that most of the challenges I found uncomfortable were the result of a lack of exercise. I was unaccustomed to giving my comfort zones a good workout. Even though I knew that all new growth requires stepping out beyond where we’ve previously gone before, it never occurred to me target my weak areas in such a manner. Mostly, I just tried to forget about them and swept them under the carpet when I accidentally stumbled across them.

So instead I started paying really close attention any time I was uncomfortable, taking careful notice of the situation, knowing there was some message of growth hiding there. For me it wasn’t about creeping out into the unknown in barely noticeable increments, it was about walking out far enough to turn around and see where I had been standing last.

Doing this had many benefits. First, it’s significantly more difficult to go into patterned behavior in new territory and when I did…I was acutely aware of the pattern that was rising up within me. This reflection of “self” interaction was worth the effort alone because it is the kind of awareness that leads to being able to change things that are so unconscious they become automatic.

Second was I got to see where I was last from a new point of view. This is another form of expanded awareness that is highly valuable as it is from this perspective that I often climb out of confusion, develop my vision for where I want to go and embrace the change of direction that will get me there.

And third is that practicing this reduced the amount of fear I carried around about what may happen to me in life. When I got used to challenging myself, and being uncomfortable it wasn’t such a big deal to me anymore…which gave me a lot more confidence when life would unexpectedly throw me some new territory

4) Make a friend of fear

And lastly we come to the full integration of this practice. I now view the challenges that come up in life as a friend that has something really important to show me.

When something new shows up in my world, I take on the assumption that it has come to present me with some really positive purpose and I place whatever it brings to me in the frame of a teacher, mentor or guide.

This assumption allows me to have a sense of gratitude in my life that isn’t dependent upon things going a certain way, providing me with a lot of flexibility and a new definition for what I term an opportunity!