If It Doesn’t Challenge You, It Doesn’t Change You!

Life sans challenges tends to get boring and frustrating. Challenges are key to improving oneself and pushing the limits to the next level. More often than not, corporate professionals can be seen saying “I am bored. I need a new challenge.” According to a recent survey, approximately 33% of professionals believe that their job is boring and has failed to present any new challenges. However, an aspect which is greatly overlooked among the working community is the idea of challenging oneself to scale to new heights. Like every other human being, I learned it the hard way. After working two jobs, I realized that the only way to earn a promotion in my career is to challenge myself. This is when I decided to lay the foundation of Allcargo with a small capital. Looking back at my journey, I can surely say “Challenges are the stepping stones to success and growth.”

Challenges - a Ladder to Self-discovery, Growth, and Success

Growth on both personal and professional requires a great deal of hard work and perseverance. Challenges are a way to igniting the spark which helps you work hard persistently and conquer mountains which once seemed out of reach. By challenging yourself, you define your professional and personal priorities and devise ways to balance them both. It ignites creativity, boosts productivity, and ultimately provides a sense of contentment. However, with a plethora of things happening around us, we more often than not put the idea on the back burner. An effective way to overcome this obstacle is through self-motivation.

Self-Motivation: Let’s Tackle the Challenges Head-on

I personally believe, the foundation of the biggest changes is laid within individuals. The people who channel this energy to keep themselves motivated to work towards the manifestation of the change emerge as successful pioneers of their generation. When you inspire yourself and start to hear the voice within, you automatically become equipped with the capabilities required to take control of any situation irrespective of the difficulty of the challenge at hand. By simply looking beyond the bare minimum of what’s required, you can guide yourself to a path of growth and success. Through self-motivation, you will learn to at times break the status quo and at times you will learn to adapt to working within it. Ultimately, self-motivation to tackle challenges head-on and adopting a proactive approach is sure to take you places in the long run.

Building the Self-Motivation Reservoir

A simple step to instilling self-motivation is starting simple and identifying a specific challenge at hand. According to the American Psychological Association, people with a specific set of goals and challenges are 90% likely to succeed in their objectives. By funneling your attention at one problem at a time you can boost growth and productivity. After identifying the challenge, you can sustain self-motivation in the following ways:

??Motivate People: Keep motivating people and teammates around you. In this way, the same sense of motivation will reverberate within the team and enable solving complex tasks effectively and quickly.

??Adapt: It is highly likely that the plan you laid out may go sideways. In such cases, you should be ready to adapt and continue working towards overcoming the challenge at hand.

??Focus on Learning: Constantly learn and acquire knowledge. This will help you tackle the challenge in different ways and keep your spirits up during the process.

??Create a Vision: Laying down an elaborate vision and clearly outlining the end goal will help you in measuring your progress towards it.

Let me share an instance; Long time ago a King was gifted two eaglets (baby eagles). The king was very pleased with the gift & decided to hire an experienced caretaker for them.

One day, after the eaglets grew up, the King said to the man taking care of the eagles, “I want to see their flight.”

The man signaled both eagles to fly. Both started fluttering as soon as they saw the signal. But when one eagle was touching the heights of the sky, the other flew for some seconds and returned to the branch where it was earlier sitting.

Seeing this, the King asked the caretaker, “What’s the matter with the second eagle?” The caretaker replied, “It had this problem from the beginning, he does not leave that branch.”

The King loved both eagles fondly and desperately wanted to see the second one also fly. So, the next day he announced in the whole state that the person who manages to make the second eagle fly will be rewarded with heavy prices.

After the announcement, many trained professionals came forward to try, but in vain. The king too lost hope and almost gave up.

Then one day, a man turned up. He managed to make the second eagle fly to everyone’s surprise. The King, while interacting with the man, came to know that he was a simple farmer.

When the King asked how he managed to do it, the man said,”I simply cut the branch. The branch on which he had a habit of sitting. As there was no branch, he had no option but to fly which he did very well.”

Like the eagle in this story, we also sometimes underestimate ourselves and don’t realize our true potential. A comfort zone is a beautiful place to be, but nothing ever grows there. Learning is vital to the whole process of defining and overcoming challenges and to the growth of an individual. In the end, we all need to take a moment and look back from where we started and where we are. By doing so, we can highlight the growth we have undergone and the need for certain challenges that are required to redefine the parameters of growth and success. So what are you doing today to inspire yourself to grow and succeed?