Challenges are Opportunities for Growth

“I nev­er lose. I either win or learn.” — Nel­son Mandela

I have a notable scar on my left knee because of my expe­ri­ence learn­ing how to not to use an Exac­to knife. Cut­ting some­thing rest­ing on your knee is just not a good idea! My scar is evi­dence to that cat­a­lyst of growth to bet­ter skills with, and respect for, sharp knives.

Even though we’re con­di­tioned to only want good things to hap­pen, a big part of feel­ing ful­ly alive is expe­ri­enc­ing things both amaz­ing and painful. We don’t want to be stuck in a traf­fic jam, fight with some­one we care about, lose mon­ey on an invest­ment, or break an amaz­ing heir­loom that’s been hand­ed down, from gen­er­a­tion to generation.

Win­ning and accom­plish­ment, in many ways, just rein­forces what we already know how to do. But pain, chal­lenge and strug­gle offer the great­est path to growth by forc­ing us to learn, and to find bet­ter ways of doing things.

I know I don’t real­ly learn any­thing seri­ous unless I’m in a sit­u­a­tion of great dif­fi­cul­ty. I go relent­less­ly hard, and it usu­al­ly takes a brick wall to stop me so that I can con­tem­plate that there may be a dif­fer­ent way to approach something.

The prin­ci­ple is to fail fast, make lots of mis­takes, quick­ly iter­ate and do some­thing better.

Over the hol­i­days, I took some time to reflect on the biggest, most painful expe­ri­ences over the past year and 10 years, and how they were tremen­dous cat­a­lysts for my growth. And I’m grate­ful for dozens of them in all areas of my Work, Self and Life, and in impor­tant per­son­al and busi­ness rela­tion­ships. All of them have made a notable dif­fer­ence in my life and set me on a bet­ter trajectory.

The Chal­lenge

• Review Love the Lessons, chap­ter 15 of Your Oxy­gen Mask First
• Reflect back. If you find your­self still resist­ing you haven’t soaked up all the ben­e­fits. You still have some reflect­ing to do.
• Look­ing for­ward, how can you learn even bet­ter and faster from the doozies you’ll make in 2020?