“Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.”
The first step you need to take is to get a complete picture of whatever challenge you are facing, including the good that will come out of it when properly handled. One example is improved relationships.
“Accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.”
The second step is to pinpoint the specific challenge area or areas where you need strengthening.
Using the example, let’s say that after careful analysis of all the factors, you look at the following:
- The seriousness of your efforts to meet and befriend new people and, then, to generate interest in your product, service, or opportunity.
- The degree of discipline you demonstrated in following up with interested prospects.
- The leadership ability, or lack of it, you showed in helping those people come on board as associates or clients.
- Your caring enough about the people you are working with to help them in whatever way they needed assistance and encouragement from there on.
“Don't be afraid to fail. Don't waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It's OK to fail. If you're not failing, you're not growing.”
The third step is to brainstorm about your specific challenge, and write down some solution ideas.
- Analyze it from both your viewpoint and that of potential prospects’.
- Analyze it relative to how you are handling the situation and how successful leaders in your industry are handling it.
- Compare your success at it now with your success at it a year ago, two years ago, or even five years ago. Are you improving? If not, is this maybe one of the reasons you might be stuck in your progress?
- Take into account all the factors, some of which you need to deal with to reach your goal, that you may have carelessly ignored before now.
“Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.”
The fourth step is to give the analytical half of your brain time to compute the pros and cons of the possible solutions.
Each time your subconscious pops a possible solution into your mind, jot it down and save it. Give your subconscious mind time to analyze the full scope of the situation.
“We choose to go...not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that goal will serve to measure and organize the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
The fifth step is taken one to three days after your brainstorming session.
Analyze your best options, while focusing on win-win solutions. This requires compassion, understanding, humility, and forgiveness so you can heal any broken relationships that may exist.
Using our business expansion challenge as an example, you may have had such responses as:
- Strengthen your desire by focusing on your dream.
- Make a list of opportunities to meet new people and schedule them into your planner.
- Learn to meet new people and make more friends.
- Explore continuing education opportunities in your industry to better prepare yourself to present what you have to offer in an appropriate, interesting way.
