#DesignYourDestiny | Challenge Yourself – By Henry Ukazu

Life is all about challenges, and every day we get one form of challenge or another. Whether you like it or not, you’ll surely get challenges. Challenges come from different shapes and sizes. The challenge can be personal or professional. The challenge can arise from either family, school, social, financial emotional, or even mental situations. In fact, dealing with challenges is a challenge on its own because it can be tasking. But I strongly believe every problem has a solution. What makes the difference is how you handle the challenge. Challenges can be likened to doors. In the same vein, problems are doors, they will never open unless you have the right set of key(s).

Let’s be honest, we all have at least one or two bad habits we’d like to ditch.

Every challenge that comes to you is a test to your mental and social capacity. Regardless of how the challenge comes, the ball is your court to address it, and how you address it will make the difference.

What really is challenging yourself and how do you challenge yourself?

Challenging yourself can mean different things to different people. The most insightful way of challenging yourself is to do better by not remaining in the same position. During the course of this article, we shall be discussing how we can challenge ourselves.

Leave Your Confort Zone

One of the best ways of challenging yourself is by leaving your comfort zone. It’s always hard to bring change. Ideal change starts within. Leaving your comfort zone can mean taking worthy risk after exploring all options. If it works well for you, good, even it falls below expectation, you learn from the experience. In any case, there’s no harm in trying.

Improve Yourself

Success is not a destination, rather it is a journey. On a daily basis, one must strive to add value to his/her life. For example, you can decide to learn a new language, a new skill, a new trade, attend a seminar or even do an exercise on a daily basis, write a story, poem, a book, and network with people, travel. You can even decide to wake up early and do some work. These are great and resourceful ways of challenging yourself to do better. Be advised, if something doesn’t challenge you, then it doesn’t change you. You can even kick out bad habits by resisting the temptation of watching unproductive movies by going to bed early and meditating instead of watching

Overcome Your Fears

Living in fear is one of the most deadly and sad ways to live. A lot of people die before their death. This set of individuals are always apprehensive and scared of what might happen to them if their expectations are not met. No doubt we all experience fears in one way or the other, but living in fears can be likened to accepting defeat. A great way of overcoming your fears is by facing your fears. Are you afraid of failing, driving, and speaking up, marrying? If any of the answers is no, then you still have some hurdles to cross on your path to self-discovery.

Attend one career-related seminar a month

You can challenge yourself by taking a class on a career-related job. Every employer loves an employee who takes time to improve himself/herself on the job. Don’t settle for your current job position. Aim high in your career. Book conferences that are relevant to the industry of your profession. There, absorb the lesson.

Spend Less

As human beings, we are always in the habit of spending to get our wants and needs. However, a prudent way of spending is by spending on your needs and not wants. You can do this by prioritizing. Make a realistic budget and find out how you can cut back on something so you can invest more. Challenge yourself to step out of your current budget and develop a better budget for yourself. Money management is not about what you make – it’s what you do with what you make. Setting a savings goal can definitely be a challenge, and an especially uncomfortable one if it means cutting your spending to reach your goal. But in the long run, you’ll be so glad you challenged yourself in this way.

Exercise Daily

You don’t need to go to the gym to exercise. You can exercise at the comfort of your home. A simple 9-minute run around your neighborhood or an intense dance routine done in your living-room can do wonders for yourself. Aside from the obvious reason that exercise can help you maintain your regular weight or shed those unnecessary pounds, it can also aid in making you feel better about yourself by releasing endorphins. Exercise also helps you to focus well when you meditate rightly.

Start Small

A good way of challenging yourself is by starting small. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the right single step in the right journey.  That said, the best way is to start with small steps and put yourself in an uncomfortable situation. For example, if you plan to read a book every month, you can start by reading a page daily and them grow from there. In the same way, if you plan to write a book or do any productive task, you can challenge yourself by starting small nor matter how little it is.

In conclusion, challenging yourself entails, doing better than you were yesterday, last month, a year or even a decade. However, the best form of challenge is challenging yourself as opposed to competing with another person. You can do healthy completion, but don’t try to imitate another person. Run your race!

Henry Ukazu writes from New York. He works with the New York City Department of Correction as the Legal Coordinator. He’s the author of the acclaimed book Design Your Destiny – Actualizing Your Birthright To Success. He can be reached via henrous@gmail.com