Problems, Challenges, Opportunities
14 November 2006A way to change your thinking to become more optimistic and take back your control of the situation.
Nobody likes problems. Problems suck. There’s always a difficulty that needs to be solved, and they’re always something that’s holding you back and getting in the way of your true confidence.
On your way to achieving your goals, you will inevitably run into hurdles that you didn’t foresee. When we’re looking at what’s stopping us from reaching our goals we have a tendency to look at these roadblocks as problems, which, in my experience, isn’t an optimal way of thinking.
With a problem, we’re into negative thinking. We start to feel like we’re lacking or incomplete, and so all solving this problem does is bring us back to the level we were before we had this problem. We haven’t improved in any substantial way as a result of solving this problem. And since you’re either moving forwards or going backwards, you’re actually a little worse off than you were before you had to go and solve this problem, since you’ve spent (wasted?) energy that could have been invested in making your life better.
Solving problems is great if all you want to do is get by but I don’t want to just survive, I want to thrive. So what can we do when we want to achieve everything we desire?
Challengesfor most people are far superior to problems. Which would you rather have, a problem or a challenge? With a challenge it’s far easier to keep an upbeat mentality. Challenges are tough, yes, but they’re achievable. Problems are something that more often than not you can’t solve without help.
If you want to go one step further, change all your challenges into opportunities. Challenges still involve a struggle, a hurdle to overcome whereas an opportunity offers so much more. With an opportunity, there’s so much gain and so little payment or suffering. Opportunities are golden sources of possibilities.
Think of the following three statements and see how you feel about them:
- “I’ve a problem developing my social confidence.â€
- “It’s a challenge to develop my social confidence.â€
- “I’ve an opportunity to develop my social confidence.â€
The first statement probably makes you feel somewhat helpless and hopeless. Even with the second statement developing your confidence seems difficult. It’s better than having a problem, that’s for sure, but still, it’s not as powerful or as optimistic as the final statement.
Looking at adding an emotive statement to each one, it would be quite difficult to say “I’m enjoying the problem I have developing my social confidence.†(It even sounds overly clumsy and verbose). The second statement makes it a lot easier to add emotions to it “I enjoy the challenge of developing my social confidence.†Opportunities excite us! Who wouldn’t be thrilled at all the possibilities an opportunity can open up?
Taking it to the highest level I can think of: Imagine some situation you are fearful of right now. Some encounter you don’t feel strong enough for, some conversation or meeting or situation that you just can’t see a solution to. You’re probably phrasing this as a problem, and with problems we tend to focus on what we can’t do as opposed to what we can do. Now, imagine this situation was the opportunity you had to put you on a path to achieving every single one of your life’s goals. All you had to do what show up and the rest would take care of itself. It was that good of an opportunity.
Now imagine putting that feeling into every single problem or challenge you have going forward in your life. Can you just feel how optimistic and powerful you’d be when faced with something you didn’t expect?
No more problems, just opportunities
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