”Challenges
are what make life interesting;
Overcoming
them is what makes life meaningful.”
This very insightful quotation was written by Joshua J. Marine, an obscure American
author about whom little else is known. Despite his relative obscurity as an
author, his quotation has over the years taken on a life of its own and has
been used by a wide and expanding list of authors and speakers in a varying
range of settings. Indeed, each person’s life is a reflection of the endless
series of challenges to which he is exposed, and the manner in which he
responded to them. Each life is defined by the challenges faced, and the way a
person deals, or does not deal with them, will determine his physical and
mental well-being. These are the real factors that will determine how
meaningful his life will become for him. In some ways, they appear to define
the true purpose in living this life on earth.
Unlike all the other members of the animal kingdom
who spend their whole life in the pursuit of only two goals, survival and
procreation, the human being is endowed with the unique ability to think, to dream and to hope and in so doing,
to determine his own direction, quality, and purpose of his life. All the
animals deal with the challenges of any kind by applying automatic instinctive
responses or by predictable repetitive learned actions. They are locked into
this behavior and will continue to repeat them until they are able to learn
alternative responses. Human beings on the other hand, endowed with the ability
to think and to reason, can benefit from these challenges by learning lessons,
anticipating recurrences and altering behavior. It is this fundamental
difference of just reacting instead of reasoning, that has allowed man to grow,
mature and expand, while the rest of the animal kingdom has stagnated.
From the moment of birth to the very end of life as
we know it, we are faced with challenges from every direction which, although
appearing as random and unconnected events for the most part, they do in fact
ultimately serve the vital role of providing life’s meaning and purpose. In any
situation, it is never the strength or the quality of the challenge that is the
determining factor in the final outcome, but always how the individual copes
with the challenge and what he learns from it that really matters. Life is
growth and every challenge is another opportunity to learn and to grow. But
such growth can only occur when the challenges are confronted and lessons are
learnt. It is only by facing the challenges can one get the opportunity to
establish and re-establish one’s priorities, and any attempt to avoid or modify
this experience in any way will clearly lead to inadequate or distorted
outcomes.
Challenges represent the greatest opportunity for
the individual to learn and to measure his progress. Without them, it would be
difficult to appreciate any change occurring or to determine degrees of failure
or success. All of these can only be measured by changes that have occurred as a
result of the challenges experienced. Each challenge provides an opportunity
for the individual to evaluate his response and to determine its usefulness in
producing the desired outcome. This is the most efficient way to discover one’s
own limits and how much one is willing to commit to reach a desired goal. Not
making use of this fact has been the major stumbling block preventing so many
more people from benefiting fully from their challenges in life. Good
understanding or good intentions are not enough without the willingness and the
intention to make the effort to be able to achieve meaningful change.
But all of this is neither free nor does it take
place without some type of cost. There is a price to pay in the effort needed
in learning how to deal with the impact of the challenge. Success is measured
by the sacrifice needed and this will only be achieved by adapting and by
learning. Challenges in fact, play a primary and fundamentally catalytic role
in achieving human growth and maturity throughout the life of the individual.
Those who are willing to make the effort to deal with them are the ones who
enjoy a meaningful and rewarding life, while those who shy away, either as a
result of fear, inability or insecurity will be left behind with the mass of humanity
to live out their lives in mediocrity.
Meaningful challenges whatever their direction,
serve to incite the individual to rise to another level, to test himself and in
so doing improve his ability. They also serve to reassure him that he is able
to accomplish more than he thought he was able to do. They effectively identify
the weaknesses as well as the strengths, and uncover the obstacles that must be
overcome to satisfy his hopes and dreams. Above all, without them, the
individual will not be able to discover how much effort he is prepared to
expend to overcome them and how deeply committed to achieve his goals and
expectations he is. It is only by facing his challenges that a person will get
to know himself.
But most people when faced with challenges prefer
to choose the easier road of learning to live with them. They believe that this
is the only way it should be, and nothing can be done to change the situation.
They develop a “defeatist” attitude and accept the “victims mentality” that
goes along with the feeling. These are the people who live out their lives
convinced that everything and everyone is against them, that while others get
all the good luck and the opportunities, they have none. They are contented to
live their lives just existing like helpless flotsam floating on the waters of
life, drifting along and allowing others or circumstances to define them. To
them, challenges will serve only to disturb their equilibrium and create more
problems for them. They are to be avoided at all cost.
The commonly accepted impression that successful
people have all been able to overcome challenges because they were fortunate to
possess extra qualities from the beginning is generally true. Clearly a child
exposed to a stable environment, not encumbered by poverty or physical
disability, with the opportunity for good education and good example will be in
a better physical and mental state to deal with and overcome the challenges
they may encounter. But for as long as man has inhabited the earth, there have
been countless examples of people of all walks of life, with a wide spectrum of
questionable opportunity and ability who have achieved unparalleled success
despite significant challenges in their lives. In fact, it would not be
unreasonable to conclude that these very limitations may have been the triggers
that resulted in propelling them to strive to reach heights that they might
have considered unreachable.
History reveals that many of the successfully
accomplished people willingly admitted that they gained very useful character
traits as a result of having to deal with their particular challenges and this
propelled them to seek greater success. These include such examples as:
Benjamin
Franklin, who did not start school
until age 10 years, spent his life moving from employment to employment, but by
dint of effort became one of the leaders of the new American Federation and one
of its Founding Fathers.
Winston
Churchill, a dyslectic child with
emotional instability, poor student and unsuccessful in his many attempt at
election, yet as Prime Minister of Great Britain during WWII, led the nation to
victory.
Helen
Keller, who became deaf and blind
in early childhood but was able to complete full university education and
become a powerful social and political activist.
Stephen
Hawking, the world’s most
prominent and most respected Astrophysicist who was diagnosed with severe ALS
at age 21 as a student and spent the rest of his life confined to a wheelchair.
Nick
Vujicic, an Australian who was
born without arms or legs but grew up learning to live independently, becoming
a successful motivational speaker.
A study of all these, and in fact in every single
incident where success has been achieved, there is a constant and common
underlying factor always operating. They never saw a challenge as an
impenetrable obstacle, but rather as an opportunity that should be embraced and
overpowered. Their confidence was driven not by the negativity of failing, but
by the opportunity that failure offers to learn new lessons. To them,
challenges are opportunities to learn from and to change, rather than be seen
as warnings of impending failure and disappointment. These are the sentiments
that underlie every single individual who has successfully faced and overcame
his challenges in every aspect of living. Instead of worrying whether their
failures were the product of personal deficits or shortcomings beyond their
control, they see them as opportunities to gain knowledge and to avoid, in
their future endeavors.
Even a very cursory look at the life histories of
any of the large number of extremely successful entrepreneurs in today’s
economy will clearly confirm this fact. Here are a few of many examples:
Steve
Jobs, the impressive entrepreneur
who at age 23 founded Apple, building
it to a successful empire, but was fired by the board only a few years after.
Undaunted he founded a new company, NeXT
which was quickly successful, and was subsequently acquired by Apple. As a
result he regained control and has gone on to build the company to unimaginable
heights.
Bill
Gates, who is presently one of the
world’s wealthiest men, failed miserably with several early attempts but learnt
from each failure until he developed the first Microsoft product which eventually became the enormously successful
computer system used throughout the world.
Walt
Disney, unquestionably the
greatest entertainment genius the world has ever seen, failed miserably as a
newspaper reporter and with several companies he started before he found
success in the animated film industry. Very early in his career he was advised
by one of his employers that he lacked creativity and should give up his dream.
Rather than reject the advice outright, he took it to heart, learnt his
lessons, corrected himself and moved on to ultimate success.
These are just three examples of the endless
numbers of very successful people that have been able to overcome the
challenges they encountered and introduce ideas that have changed the world we
live in. Although many of them were endowed with very special gifts and
abilities that made their work easier, by far the great majority of them were
average people, with ideas, dreams, hopes and a deep-seated determination to
succeed. They all however possessed the common characteristic that was so effectively
described by an unknown author in the following terms:
“They learnt from their mistakes, reflected and
accepted failure, constantly revisited their passion and kept on pursuing their
goals, no matter what.”
-This indeed is the true secret of
learning to deal with all the challenges of life.
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