4 Personal Challenges You Must Overcome To Progress In Life

Faced with personal challenges that you would want to overcome but do not know how?

You are in the right place!

In this post, I will discuss a few of the most common personal challenges you must overcome to achieve success, be it in your relationships, at your place of work, or in your business.

Preparing for these challenges and learning some great tips to overcome them can help you to be successful.

To be honest, if you want something out of life, if there is a goal you want to reach, it will not come easy. Living the life you want is hard.

Why? Because life is always challenging.

I am sure there is a time in your life when you took a BIG step towards your goals, but then something happened that made you feel like you took 2 steps back.

This friend is LIFE!

Each day has its challenges; however, you still have to be hungry for what you want and go for it no matter what comes your way.

So, what is a challenge?

Dictionary. Cambridge defines a Challenge as “(the situation of being faced with) something that needs great mental or physical effort to be done successfully and therefore tests a person’s ability.”

To me, a challenge is an obstacle in life that might hinder or stop you from getting what you want at a specific point in time.

I see personal challenges as tough moments in life that needs all your strength, patience, and dedication to pull through and if you want to move past it.

4 Personal Challenges You Must Overcome To Achieve Success

Here are some of the most common personal challenges you must overcome to achieve success

Failure

Failure is number one on my list because I believe you have encountered failure regardless of where you are in life.

The more you fail, the more experience you gain along the way. You find out what works and what doesn’t.

Easier said than done, right!

Think about a time in your life that you didn’t reach a goal; maybe it was a time your business failed.

Was it your marriage or relationship that failed?

Could it be getting poor grades that led you to fail a class?

Whatever the cause or situation, that day or month, you lost something significant to you.

How would you describe that experience?

I would say it was painful. You probably felt stuck in life and angry at yourself or the other person.

In some situations, failure can lead to anxiety, depression, and insomnia.

Failure is on of the toughest personal challenges that must be overcome to be successful because most people keep putting them selves down once they encounter failure.

Putting you down after a mistake won’t help you persist in the face of failure in the future.

Instead, practice self-compassion when you make mistakes because we are human and are likely to make many mistakes during our careers, as well as in our personal life.

It is also important to keep at the back of your mind that, every successful person has failed at something.

Did you know that Walt Disney got fired from the Kansas City Star because his editor believed he "lacked imagination and had no fresh ideas?"

Thomas Edison, who invented the Camera's was told by his teachers that he was "too stupid to learn anything."

So how should you embrace failure and know that it will be part of your success story?

Disappointment

Disappointment is another personal challenge you must overcome to achieve success.

Why?

Because being disappointed can cause mental stress and might sometimes blur your determination for personal growth.

Disappointment takes different forms:

• People may let us down while some situations happen that are beyond our control.

• Sometimes we are disappointed by our friends, business partners, or life partner’s actions.

• A loss of a loved one can make you give up on life and, at times, God.

Allow me to take you back to 2020 when the entire world was hit with a pandemic, and we all had to cancel our plans for almost a full year. Many people had weddings planned, business opportunities to look forward to, and goals to achieve.

But out of nowhere, most of what we planned had to be either delayed or canceled. Many of us were disappointed, but this was out of our control.

There was nothing anything anyone could de besides being optimistic and praying for the best outcome.

Many people couldn’t afford meals, rent, or basic needs because they lost their jobs.

But does this mean you give up?

NO!

Getting disappointed is not the most significant issue to be concerned about. However, the failure to deal with the emotions that come with it and to let go of the pain is one of the hardest Personal Challenges you must overcome.

I took 2020 as a learning experience:

• To be appreciative of everyone and everything in my life.

• I learned that relying on one source of income is not the best financial decision.

• I learned to be creative with my time and that we are more resourceful than we think.

Takeaways from disappointments:

• No one is perfect, we all make mistakes, and that includes the people you look up to the most.

• I now understand that life is a crazy roller coaster ride. Just when you think you are at the top, something will always happen to try to bring you down, but if you are resilient, you will back up again in no time.

Financial Setbacks

If you are not making enough at your job to get by or unemployed due to a Job loss and having trouble finding a good-paying job, you know what I am talking about when I say Financial setbacks are stressful.

Many times we face setbacks as we try to accomplish our goals. Imagine losing a job in the middle of a pandemic when you need it the most or having an emergency that eats up all your savings.

Any setback you face financially might take a toll on your well-being. You might start feeling anger, and see yourself as a failure. You might even give up on your goals and start living day by day.

These feelings are okay in the beginning stages of this rough period; it sucks putting in all the hard work and having nothing to show for it.

Especially knowing how long it might take you to recover from the financial loss.

However, you need to stay focused to get through this period and start learning ways to overcome these personal challenges

Use this period as a time of reflection, listen to financial planning and budgeting podcasts, or read some free motivational online books to help your mental health stay on track as you gain knowledge on better ways to handle money.

Follow people on social media who have been through what you are going through but managed to come out as winners.

Start life afresh as you now have another opportunity, set your priorities in life, and with-in no time, all will be well. Do not stop planning. Start figuring out different options that you might want to start in the future once you find a new job, or start saving again.

Maybe it’s time to switch to a new career, or it’s time to create more income.

Remember, storms do not last forever. You can get through these financial personal challenges if you are ready to see beyond the rough times.

Here are more suggestions on how to overcome financial setbacks:

• Prepare a financial budget. with the budget plan, you would get a rough idea of your incomes and expenses in the future, so plan accordingly

• Re-evaluate your spending. Focus only on things you need vs. want.

• If you can, get a part-time job somewhere, for a while just so you can get an extra money until you solve the problems and get your things all in order. The opportunities to make extra income are endless, and there’s something for almost everyone.

Related Post: How To Manage Your Money Better

Negative Mindset

Once in a while, we all experience negative thoughts. One day “things are going great, and feel you are on top of the world,” but 2 days later, “everything sucks, and you want to crawl in a ball. “

However, we allow them to become personal challenges when we cannot separate reality from fantasy, especially in the world we live in now where social media is everything.

We live in a “FOMO” Era. People are constantly in fear of missing out, and there is a perception that others are having better lives or experiencing better things than you are.

Due to the increased use of social media, we compare ourselves to others every day, and it is negatively affecting our thinking.

But, Did you know that negative thoughts can make you sick?

Yes, they CAN!

It is easy to fall into negative thoughts when you start thinking about how people might judge you if you do or do not do something.

A negative mindset will take away your joy and passion. Maybe you feel lonely, and your thoughts are,” you don’t deserve to be loved. You have nothing to offer”.

Your thoughts match your grand vision. Negative thoughts will lead to small ideas.

Give no place to guilt, insecurities and start controlling what you think about.  You have to make a choice to not give those thoughts your valuable space.

Protect what you think by actively; start imagining your life the way you want it to be. Have thoughts that align with your biggest ideas.

You cannot stop yourself from thinking but learning how to empower yourself. You need to stand off to yourself,

Anytime you aim for bigger and better things, there will be a voice in the back of your mind telling you that YOU CAN’T DO IT.

But it is time to say SHUT UP to your inner voice.

If negativity is one of your personal challenges, here are few tips on how to change your thoughts:

• Each morning you wake up, know that you are presented with 24 hours to make new choices. Choices that inspire and will change your life for the better.

• Pay attention to your daily thoughts and interrupt them when you’re replaying something over and over in your head.

• Ask yourself, is this thought helping me moving forward or motivating me? Are these thoughts serving any purpose in my life?

We all face personal challenges in life. But it is how we handle the roughest time in our lives determines how prepared we are for the future. I would love to hear from you what your personal challenges are in life, and what you are actively doing to overcome them.