Change from getting out to getting through to accepting to embracing

We all face challenges in life. When I was younger, I hated these challenges. I wanted things to be easy and pleasant. I did everything possible to avoid them.

Inevitably, they would still surface. When they did, my reaction was immediate. I wanted out. I wanted to get away from the discomfort. I wanted to end the negative feelings associated with that struggle.

Over the years, I started to see a pattern. When presented with a challenge, I would try to get away from it. I would quit. I would run. I would pivot to something else. I wouldn’t face the challenge and work through it, knowing that would be uncomfortable.

Seeing the pattern and following the results, I realized that I kept having to start over. I would face a challenge and quit. Then I would go somewhere else. Being new to this new approach, the challenges were understandable and light. But when those challenges ramped up and became more uncomfortable, I would quit and jump to something else.

The problem was that I wasn’t making any progress. I was experiencing the challenges but not gaining anything from them. Instead of coming out on the other side better, I would end the struggle by giving up.

Since we all experience these challenges in life, we have to learn how to get through them. That is the first step. If we can get through them, we can learn from them.

We often find they aren’t as bad as we thought. Looking back at them, we have a different perspective than we did when we felt the pain and discontent. Hindsight provides additional insight that we can use to better ourselves going forward.

I still use this mindset when I face challenges. Instead of running away, I remind myself to just get through it. I know that tomorrow, next week, or next year I will be past this challenge and have learned from it. In most instances I have also been able to make progress. During the challenge, I felt like I was going backwards, but once through I saw that I learned from the experience.

Once we can do this, we can then start to move to acceptance. It is fine to get through challenges, but we will learn even more when we accept our circumstances. Acceptance becomes the way to remain calm and content during challenge.

Once we learn to accept them, we can then learn to embrace them. We can look at challenges as the normal process we go through to improve. We start to appreciate the challenges. We learn from them. We actively look for areas that will be challenging because we enjoy the feeling of overcoming them.

Challenges are a prominent part of life. We cannot escape the difficulties that will always linger in our life.

But we can learn better ways to face that adversity. We can shed the fight or flight emotion to be able to get through the challenges. Then we can accept them. Then, with enough practice, we can learn to appreciate those struggles. It is all possible when we look at challenges as steps to help us improve. We can use them to continue to make progress and get better.