Challenge (noun) - the situation of being faced with something that needs great mental or physical effort in order to be done successfully and therefore tests a person’s ability.
(Cambridge Dictionary)
Every day we face some kind of challenge. Maybe one day the challenge is to simply get out of bed, and another day’s challenge is to take care of a loved one who has fallen ill. Sometimes we choose the challenges we want to face, other times the challenge chooses us. No matter what, challenge is a constant reality we all face.
Challenges are like an artists chisel. Think of Michelangelo chiselling away at marble slabs to uncover those impeccable statues like the David or Pietà. Each tap of his hammer and chisel challenges the marble, and over time something really exquisite is revealed.
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
When we avoid challenges and yield to our comforts, the chiselling stops.
Comfort itself is both a curse and a blessing.
Comfort is a blessing in that humans have managed to cultivate a world where we take for granted the comforts we have—things our ancestors could have only dreamed of. Things like warm beds, hot showers, climate controlled accomodations, readily available food and an infinite well of entertainment.
Comfort becomes a curse when we yield to it too often. And how easy is it to yield to?! Just switch off, don’t worry, be happy, relax—have it your way.
Too much of this leaves us hidden and buried in the marble slab. The world will never know our truth and our beauty, because we couldn’t be bothered to chisel it out.
Accepting Challenges
For all of the challenges that life brings us, there are some we will have no choice but to accept. We will all be challenged by families, relationships, work, life in various ways along our journey.
But sometimes, when we want to grow, we need to seek new challenges. We need to challenge ourselves to try something new, to build new connections, to expand our scope so that we can achieve something more.
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
Of course it is completely up to you what your definition of “more” is—if you want more freedom, maybe you start your own business; if you want more clients, you advertise and reach out; if you want more of some skill, you sign up for lessons.
Seeking new challenges is actually quite easy—in our modern world, we have access to an infinite pool of opportunities. However, accepting a new challenges is the hard part, because acceptance means you have to surrender to some thing—event, process, practice, etc—that is new and different.
Accepting and surrendering means you have to open yourself up to being hit with the chisel and hammer. Accepting a challenge doesn’t mean you get to keep doing things the way you did before. It means you’re going to enter new territory, and every fiber of your being is going to have to be impressionable and malleable in order for the challenge to bring out new features in you.
Acceptance is the act of surrendering to being changed.
The Beauty of Change
If Michelangelo had never taken his hammer and chisel to those slabs of marble, we never would have been graced with such beautiful works of art. The marble slabs would not have changed into the forms that we get to admire and enjoy to this day.
The beauty of challenging ourselves is that we can take an active role in our own changes. We can change ourselves, our mindsets, our environments, our realities—all by finding and accepting challenges that shape us and our realities into whatever we have envisioned for ourselves.
A beautiful life cannot be dreamed into reality; it must be carved.
Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.
What are some ways in which you’ve been challenging yourself lately? What changes are you seeing in yourself thanks to recent challenges?
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