Are you wired to succeed?

Of course you are. Success is a must have experience in today’s society. We are indoctrinated through our childhood to be a ‘winner’. What does success look like to you? Do you even know? You must have experienced success at some point. Everyone has.

Even in our stereotypically packaged version of success, you must have tasted it. It is an expectation we all have. And yet therein lies the issue. It is easy to be a good winner. But what does winning really teach us?

Seeking success is a good thing. We all want to feel good. Yes. But can we feel good when we are under pressure, when things don’t go to plan? This is the real challenge. Why? Well because it is when we develop equanimity that we can enjoy coping mechanisms that really work. Not just the sugar-coated positive thinking template that has drifted into popular culture. This ability to stay in the eye of the storm without flinching, to ride the waves of ongoing challenges on a daily basis is an art. This is a true skill. Setbacks no longer need to be feared. Granted it is not something we desire but it is a fruit that needs to be considered, contemplated and digested as part of our life journey.

Our relentless pursuit of success results in a limited focus on what we believe will serve us. And yet challenge is an intrinsic part of life. We can repeat affirmations, do all the positive visualisations and manifest all the good vibes we like but our coping mechanism for an essential part of our life that challenges bring us is often deeply inadequate.

Challenges can be our greatest teachers. They develop our character. They reveal where we need to grow and evolve. We only fail if we do not learn anything from our experience. Therefore do not let challenges define you, allow them to teach you.

In fact when we look at our life experience as a teacher, no longer do we see the events that transpire in a black-or-white, fail or succeed manner. If you want something, go after it. Do not let your own personal limitations of what you think your life should look like stop you from pursuing what you want. Yet do not let the inevitable challenges that will occur diminish your enthusiasm. These events will only serve to develop your character and make the glory of your victory so much sweeter.

In my coaching sessions I offer strategies to manage the challenges of life and to see the gifts that each of these experiences bring. They bring us the gift of growth but only when we perceive these situations as an opportunity for expansion rather than a place of contraction.

Maintaining a positive attitude is critical to succeed. This will actually make challenges appear easier. In 2008, Professor Dennis Proffitt at the University of Virginia conducted a study with participants where he took the students to a steep hill and their backpacks were loaded up with heavy rocks. The students were split into 2 groups. Half  of the students listened to some upbeat, inspired music and half listened to depressing music. The students were then asked to estimate how steep they thought the hill was. The ones who listened to the positive music thought the hill was 19 degrees. The ones who listened to the depressing music thought the hill was 31 degrees. And yet although the hill was the same, their estimation was radically different. Same challenge, different perspective. This study indicates that how we view our world and the challenges before us is critical to our mind-set in how we approach challenges and how imperative it is to literally approach the hills with a positive state of mind.

This topic of challenge clearly has a relationship to the concept of resilience. One of our greatest strengths is the quality of resilience. This ability to bend rather than break, to ride the waves of life, to work with situations rather than resist them and the ability to adapt, all contribute to making us resilient. This quality of resilience gives us genuine inner strength to cope with life’s challenges and remain calm and unflinching in the eye of the storm.