When we already feel unsure of ourselves, it is normal to want to avoid challenging situations. It is natural to avoid something stress inducing, or something we are not confident in.

Failing is typically demotivating and makes us feel inadequate. However, often the most challenging scenarios are the most rewarding.

If you start to alter your mindset towards challenges, you can actually use them as an opportunity for growth and as a valuable tool to boost your confidence. 

Challenging situations are unavoidable: in life, there will always be another challenge. This could vary from a job, relationship, a fitness journey, and so on.

Some of these challenges can become overwhelming or happen so unexpectedly that it’s difficult to adjust to them. When this happens it’s easy to resign yourself to a feeling of failure. It’s easy to believe you are inadequate, and that you should have anticipated this.

Resigning yourself in this feeling is normal, and it is not something easy to overcome. 

Altering Your Mindset Towards Challenges

The first steps in altering your mindset towards challenges, is confidence in yourself. Easier said than done, we know. You need to trust that you will learn and grow from this.

This is not always easy. Depending on the challenge, it could take weeks or months to fully overcome it. Some challenges may even be ongoing for a longer period of time.

But you need to learn to trust yourself, and have confidence that you will grow from this experience. A good way to build this confidence is looking back at previous challenges you have overcome, and comparing yourself now to your past self.

This will reinforce that confidence in yourself, and help you believe you can use this challenge to build on yourself. 

Depending on the scenario there are many different ways to pull yourself from this mindset. For most scenarios, taking a step back and allowing yourself a moment to assess the situation will help you with your decision on what is next.

Often, when we encounter challenges, we immediately panic and worry, and our decisions are based on a stressed and overwhelmed mindset. Taking a step back and allowing yourself to fully assess the challenge, may provide you a more controlled and rational mindset.

The more often we encounter challenges, the better we get and controlling our mindset, and knowing how to overcome them. 

Get out of your comfort zone

Often, we go out of our way to avoid challenging scenarios, and choose to stay in our comfort zone because this is where we feel safe. But trying to avoid challenges will not help us grow. If anything, it will probably make us feel stagnant.

As mentioned before, challenges are unavoidable, so even if we go out of our way to avoid them, they will find us eventually. The more challenges you use to your advantage, the better you will get at accepting them and growing from them.

If you choose to stay in your comfort zone, it will only make challenges that much harder to overcome. Stepping outside of your comfort zone, and embracing challenges as an opportunity for growth is the best way to overcome them. 

Do not compare yourself to others

It is however important to remember that every challenge is different, and every individual’s reaction to a challenge will be different. Everyone has different experiences and responses.

It can become disheartening when you see one person rise to a challenge effortlessly, while you are struggling. This is why it is important to compare yourself only to you. It might be the case they have dealt with something similar before, or they could be very good at hiding how difficult it is for them.

So, you only need to compare your growth to your past self. There is not a set timeframe for when and how you need to overcome a challenge, you can even use the same challenge for growth. You will notice over time how well you adapt to overcome it. This could be an exercise class for example.

At first, it will be challenging, and it may consistently be challenging. But at one point you will look back and realise you have come so far. This is how you can use challenges as an opportunity for growth. 

These are only a few tips on how to alter your mindset to use challenges as an opportunity for growth. There are many other ways you can approach this. It is important to take away that trusting yourself, stepping outside your comfort zone, and not comparing yourself to others will put you a step in the right direction to using challenges to grow. 

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