How to Rise to the Occasion

This final installment of the series “How to Enjoy Challenges” examines how a challenge can bring the best in a person — or the worst.  By diligently removing threats you associate with challenges, anyone can become a brave soul who rises to the occasion and pulls out the best in him/herself.

A challenge can bring out polarized reactions from people.

Most everyone I know cracks under stress.  By that, I mean that people revert to the most immature coping mechanism in their arsenal.  It’s as if the stress reduces them to a mere child.  Some people say nasty things.  Others cower in a corner.  Some turn violent.

Who I Become Under Stress

For me, I have a number of built-in reactions to stress.

Verbally, I tend to become silent.  It feels too vulnerable to speak and express my stress, so I hold it in and let it fester.  Another impulse I have is to try to make myself blameless, by either wiping my tracks or coming up with rational-sounding justifications of why I am having a problem.  I revert often to lose-win deals so others are less likely to get upset with me.

The problem is that this kind of fear is really hard to hide.  I’m sure you’ve seen a child who makes up silly reasons for doing naughty things.  You can see right through such a child — and if you are mean-spirited, you’ll know exactly what to say or do to push the child exactly where s/he is afraid, and manipulate him/her.

Regressing under Threat

It appears that being threatened reduces us to a point in life when we first formed the defense mechanism to deal with such a stress.  Perhaps you got bullied as a child — or perhaps you were punished severely for an innocent mistake.  Whatever the incident, all of us acquire some kind of trauma in the process of growing up, and most of us carry defense mechanisms that we employ to prevent that painful event to happen again.  Except, these defensive tactics tend to be entirely fear-driven and immature, and often the effect is that it invites exactly the kind of threat you’re trying to prevent.  It’s just like a child who lies to cover up a mistake.  You have to keep on lying to cover up the lies you made up, and you drive yourself deeper into a hole.

Why would some of us become the very worst of ourselves when challenged, while others seem to do just the opposite — pull out the best in themselves?

The difference lies in how one perceives the challenge: whether it threatens them or not.

James Bond Remains Cool

I’m not a 007 fanatic or anything, but one of the things I’ve always liked about the James Bond character is that he seems to remain perfectly cool and collected in the most dire situations.  He doesn’t even lose his wit and humor.  Or in a more realistic example, I know people who are EMT (emergency medical technician — in US, they are the ones that arrive in an ambulance in a medical emergency) who are trained to function at their best under circumstances where most of us would be terrified and reduced to tears.

The reason James Bond and EMTs can function in gravely challenging situations is because they don’t feel personally threatened by the situation.

Notice I said they don’t feel, not that they aren’t.

The difference lies squarely on the perception of the threatened.  Sure, people are trying to kill James Bond.  Or as an EMT, if you screw up in a medical emergency there can be dire consequences.  These people have all the reasons in their world to feel threatened.  Except they don’t.

And because they don’t feel threatened, there’s no need to revert to childish defense mechanisms.  They can remain level-headed and rational, and deal with the situation in the most mature manner.

It’s the perception of threat that makes us crack in challenging situations, not the challenges themselves.

Every Challenge Is an Opportunity

Throughout this series we’ve been discussing how to remove the element of threat from challenges/problems facing you.  When you do stop associating the two elements, then there will be no more need to revert to coping mechanisms when facing challenges.  You’ll be able to remain calm and grounded, and call up necessary resources to overcome the obstacles.  In the process, you’ll gain fresh insights, acquire new skills, and boost your confidence.  Problem-solving becomes fun, just as a good board game is fun when it’s not too easy.  Worthy problems start motivating you. The more you build the history of rising to the occasions, the more you welcome such challenges, even to the point of craving them.  A positive cycle of growth ensues, and your childish coping mechanisms get left out in the dust, moldy and rusty from unuse.

A lot of people hate math.  It is said that girls/women tend to hate it more often.  Yet, my 5-year old daughter is doing 2-digit additions  for fun, and she figured out multiplications without being taught.  My wife loves to pass time doing logic puzzles — and she welcomes difficult ones.  Ones too easy are boring.  Obviously, they never learned to associate math with the frustration of not being able to understand or the threat of being embarrassed.

Rise to the Occasion

Disassociating threat from challenges frees you up to rise to the occasion, to pull out the best in you to meet the challenge.  And that reaction forms a new habit, and you grow to become able to meet bigger challenges.  This is how greatness develops.  A person’s greatness can be measured by the scope of the challenges they can face and overcome.

This potential is available to all of us, not just select few.  Work to separate threats from problems, because challenges are opportunities.  You have the power to make them so.  And when you acquire the ability to enjoy challenges, then little will rob the joy out of living.  Life is filled with worthy problems to solve.  You’ll gleefully go about your days, immersing yourself into bigger and biggest challenges you can find, enjoying every minute of pouring everything you have into solving them.

If you learn to enjoy challenges, then you’ll enjoy life.  I guarantee it.

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