Confronting the Everyday Challenges of Life

What Living Amidst Challenges Entails

Life keeps coming with new challenges, difficulties or problems for man. This can be viewed in two ways;  firstly, as a way of making man suffer and secondly, as a way of making him grow and develop. We can say that these two exist only in the minds of individuals, and whatever the case is in the mind of any individual, affects his attitude towards the struggles that confront him daily. This helps him in confronting the everyday challenges of life which he is sure to encounter.

Inferential knowledge has made us realize that there isn’t any man who is free of challenges and this means that they are sure to come. The struggles of life are mutable, and they change at different points in one’s life. Consequently, when man solves a particular problem or overcomes a particular challenge in his life, he is sure to expect another.

How Do We Perceive Challenges

When man looks at his struggles as suffering – a kind of wicked act on him by nature – he lives through life in a bitter state and may not grasp all lessons he should learn from overcoming the challenges. Struggles, when overcome lead to growth and advancement. Man needs to overcome every immanent challenge in order to face future ones because the advancement gained in every challenge is necessary for an efficient confrontation of the next. This can be seen as “life” itself, what living really entails.

If man can accept the challenges that face him daily, then, life takes a different shape and makes a different meaning for him. He sees himself as a schoolboy, improving daily through overcoming difficulties. He lives happily and can claim to have cracked the code of right living. The acceptance of challenges and the decision to confront challenges are things required to bring about the change which is necessary in man’s present state. That change which is necessary and not that which man himself thinks he requires. Man desires change, but when he has a faulty mindset, he wants this change in areas that do not matter because he cannot see what is really taking place.

Challenges From Two Different Angles

Two young boys were tutored privately by the same mathematics teacher. He usually gave them assignments at the end of every week’s lesson on the subject taught. On a particular occasion, he suddenly gave assignments on log tables even though he taught algebra for the week. Both students were surprised at this and reacted accordingly. However, while the first boy was silently uttering nasty words at the teacher for being cruel and unkind, the second boy felt joyous. He silently thanked the teacher in his heart for considering them worthy and capable of attempting such advanced math.

The Best Approach to Challenges

The difference between the two boys is just “perspective”/“mindset”. What one considered an obstacle, another considered a means of elevation to greater heights. This is what happens in man’s daily activities and he refuses to recognize them positively. Macro-challenges, mini-challenges, micro-challenges, nano-challenges etc., are all present at one point or the other.

Man has to keep his mindset aright in order to recognize these challenges, accept them, confront them, and grow by overcoming them. With a mindset like this, man can then wish himself more and more challenges because he wishes more and more growth for himself. The more challenges he overcomes, the more he grows, then, why not embrace them all wholeheartedly and even seek more for the sake of extra-growth.

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