Quite honestly, I’m a sucker for a challenge. Not the life threatening type, the personal ability type. My piano teacher always used it each year prior to the piano contest as a motivator. It worked. A challenge is a motivator for me. However, that’s not true for everyone. Some people walk away, for whatever reason, from a challenge. Other people react in other ways – you?
Remember that I’m defining challenge as the not life threatening type – that’s simple foolhardiness. The kind of challenge I’m talking about is the motivating type. One of the definitions that Webster uses to describe challenge is: anything that calls for special effort. To me that means that it is something you can accomplish but it is also something that requires something ‘extra’ from you to get to the goal.
Challenge also speaks to your own personal values. You obviously aren’t going to engage in a challenge for the sake of the challenge… at least most people won’t. But a challenge to your values requires an assessment by you regarding the value, minimally – is it? And then, is it worth your effort. Those questions will define your values.
Obviously the important consideration is how you view challenges. Is it a threat? Threats can be motivators but they can also be a negative. Threats typically have a large emotional component to them. Emotions can be helpful simply because they give you a great deal of information about the depth of your feelings toward the value. However, there’s also a down side in that they can blind us from seeing clearly.
Avoiding challenges is never healthy (my definition) because it blinds us to seeing and it doesn’t allow us to face the truth of what we say is our value. Challenges are healthy as long as we don’t fight the person that has challenged us and focus on the value to determine its relevance for us.
