Non-acceptance of Challenge as a chore
"Perception is everything. To a large extent, what you perceive is what you get. In turn, psychologists, have determined ‘What you perceive is what you believe’, so your thoughts determine what you actually see. Often, these beliefs are subconscious, gained during childhood and early life, and these beliefs can hold you back, meaning you don't reach your full potential. However, these beliefs can be altered, and you can then change your perception, allowing you to be unencumbered by these often-negative ways of looking at things.
Firstly, don't see challenge as a chore or as work, but change your mindset to value obstacles and barriers as puzzles to solve. Everyone likes to be able to sail through a task, to effortlessly complete an undertaking without even breaking a sweat. However, we also all know that this is an unrealistic expectation, a pipe dream. Things constantly change, we have to continuously update our skills and we cannot be naturally good (whatever that means) at everything, no matter how much we want to be.
So, whether we are an Olympic Gymnast, a corporate CEO, a brain surgeon or a full time parent, you will face challenges. The key is to relish them. Your brain is muscle, and it needs to be challenged in order to grow. To take an obviously analogy: you would not expect your biceps to grow lifting 1kg weights. No, you would push yourself and continuously strive to lift more, to improve. You need to view other challenges in your life in the same way as this.
Carol Dweck, the most famous proponent of mindset psychology, says as much in her work. For Dweck (2013), ‘The hallmark of successful individuals is that they love learning: they seek challenges, they value effort, and they persist in the face of obstacles’. The key here is that it is not your intelligence or your innate brilliance that make you successful, though this is actually the most popular and widely held theory on why people achieve, but your attitude towards challenges and setbacks. The implications of this are that you should not put your current success down to your talent but to your effort, and that any future success should be seen to be the result of your effort and trial and error. Seek out challenge, relish it and see it as an opportunity to grow. Or in Dweck’s words ‘value learning over the appearance of smartness, to relish challenge and effort, and to use errors as routes to mastery’.
So, whether we are an Olympic Gymnast, a corporate CEO, a brain surgeon or a full time parent, you will face challenges. The key is to relish them. Your brain is muscle, and it needs to be challenged in order to grow. To take an obviously analogy: you would not expect your biceps to grow lifting 1kg weights. No, you would push yourself and continuously strive to lift more, to improve. You need to view other challenges in your life in the same way as this.
Carol Dweck, the most famous proponent of mindset psychology, says as much in her work. For Dweck (2013), ‘The hallmark of successful individuals is that they love learning: they seek challenges, they value effort, and they persist in the face of obstacles’. The key here is that it is not your intelligence or your innate brilliance that make you successful, though this is actually the most popular and widely held theory on why people achieve, but your attitude towards challenges and setbacks. The implications of this are that you should not put your current success down to your talent but to your effort, and that any future success should be seen to be the result of your effort and trial and error. Seek out challenge, relish it and see it as an opportunity to grow. Or in Dweck’s words ‘value learning over the appearance of smartness, to relish challenge and effort, and to use errors as routes to mastery’.
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