Personal growth can happen in a lot of ways, but active self-development includes challenging yourself every once in a while. In this post, I’ll guide you through the how and why.
Defining self-challenging
According to Collins, a challenge is “something new and difficult which requires great effort and determination”. Cambridge defines it as: “something that needs great mental or physical effort in order to be done successfully and therefore tests a person’s ability”. As a verb, Merriam-Webster defines to challenge as:
- to stimulate or engage especially by presenting with difficulties that test someone’s ability
- to invite into competition
Mixing them all up, my definition for self-challenging is: ‘to invite oneself to doing something new or difficult that requires mental determination and/or physical effort’.
Why challenging ourselves is necessary
More than ever before, our lives are filled with comfort and almost devoid of any friction*. Challenges are something to seek out rather than a daily fact of life. This isn’t great for our resilience. After all, resilience is created by doing the hard things. And it is a very powerful thing: the ability to be happy again after something difficult or bad has happened. Even in all our comfort, life is going to throw hard things our way. If we possess little to no resilience, every unexpected hardship can hit us like an enormous wave and it will take a long time before it subsides and we are feeling calm and steady again. That is why activaly seeking out challenges is necessary. To stretch our comfort zone. To become comfortable with some discomfort or even pain. To build the strength and trust we need to deal with life’s unpleasant surprises.
Novelty
In order for us not to get stuck in old, familiar patterns, however comfortable that may be, we need to keep our brains adaptable. We need to be able to try new or different things without going into panic mode. Doing something you haven’t done before strengthens neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to adapt and change. Novelty is a great way to challenge your brain. Trying something new can be very stimulating, especially if you approach it with a beginner’s mind. This attitude is called shoshin, a concept from Zen Buddhism that encourages you to keep an open mind and admit you don’t know something (yet). When you encounter something for the first time, and you let yourself be open to new experiences and insights, the brain is able to form new connections and rewrite old ones. In practice, this can look like: meeting new people, traveling to new places, learning a new language, or trying a new recipe. As long as you approach it with a curious beginner’s mind, your brain will be able to create new neural pathways, which strengthens resilience.
Difficulty
We do not always need novelty to challenge ourselves. We can also increase the difficulty level of something we’re familiar with. A simple example can be to do more reps in your next workout, or try a new level of sudoku. Another method is to resist the tools we have come to rely on to make our lives more convenient. Especially with the rise of AI, we don’t even have to think for ourselves anymore. That scares me. I want to stay human, struggles and all. Let’s not generate meal plans, texts explaining our feelings, or new outfits. Let’s research nutrition, free write (by hand) about how you feel, and go to a freaking store.
When you do the things that you’d rather skip, you show yourself you can handle the hard stuff. That you don’t have to shy away from the things that make you nervous, uncomfortable or downright scared. That you can have the difficult conversation, go to an event alone, or start your own business. Maybe there’s something you’ve been thinking about doing, knowing deep down you should, but you keep putting it off. See this as a sign to take that first step. That way, you’ll start building up that trust in yourself, which will make taking the second step a little easier, and so on.
Motivation
The way I find the why-question very unhelpful when we’re talking about self-awareness, I find it quite helpful for the topic of self-challenging. After all, why do something hard if you don’t have a clear motivation? It is far easier to, for example, eat healthier, if you know and remind yourself how much better it makes you feel physically and mentally. So ask yourself why you want to go through this challenge. Why do I want to reduce my screentime to a maximum of 1.5 hours a day? Because I think every minute spent on Instagram I could be doing something that is actually fun or helpful to my life. Why should I go to a dance class that is just above my level? Because it gives me so much joy to watch myself get better over time. When I know what I’m doing it all for, actually doing it becomes easier.
Discipline and kindness
The way you speak to yourself matters, always. And coaching yourself through a challenge requires a balance between discipline and kindness. If your approach contains only willpower, pressure and control, you may achieve your desired results, but at what cost? Are you punishing yourself when you skipped a workout or had a cheat meal? Does that make you feel more motivated to do better next time? If it does, then this approach might work for you, but it is not my preferred method. I like to be a little kinder to myself. I offer myself words of encouragement when I feel I can push myself a little further, and I allow myself to rest when I know I really need it. It’s all in recognizing what you need in the moment. Setting goals for yourself doesn’t always mean you must achieve them no matter what. That’s why I included ‘inviting’ into my definition. Inviting yourself to do better has a very different feel to it than forcing or bullying yourself into improvement. Moreover, it moves us away from black and white thinking. If you set a goal, work towards it and don’t reach it entirely, isn’t that still better than if you hadn’t set the goal and thus made no progress at all?
Personal example
Recently, I’ve noticed that in conversations I let other people take the lead most of the time, which often results in people bombarding me with information and me wondering how they don’t notice they’ve been monologuing to me for the past half hour. I’ve concluded that it is up to me to break that pattern. So the challenge I have set myself for the next time this happens, is to take control of the conversation. I find this very difficult, as I always want to make people feel like they can talk freely and are truly heard. But it’s up to me to notice the limits of my listening capicity and assert myself when needed. I know my why: I’ve been feeling very drained by people I really like and I don’t want to feel like that anymore. And it’s my responsibility to change that. So I will practice by trying something new, scary as it may be.
Exercise of the day
I have two exercises in mind, so you get to choose. Or you can try them both, if you dare.
- Do something this week that you haven’t done before. This can be small, like getting your coffee from a new place, or bigger, like visiting a city you’ve never been to. Try to really practice shoshin. Look around, let yourself notice all the things that are new to you. Don’t default to your comfort patterns by ordering the same thing or looking at lists of spots you should visit. Let yourself be uncertain, curious, surprised.
- Think about how you can level up with something you do more often. Add a little bit more weight to your strength training. Make a pasta sauce from scratch instead of buying it premade. Watch a show you know with subtitles in a different language. Whatever it is, put in some extra effort to make it a little more difficult for yourself.
Have fun!
Note on comfort
*Of course, this does not apply to everyone. I’m speaking to my own experience, as a white, able-bodied, cis woman living in a wealthy country. There are many people who live in inhumane conditions everyday. To suggest they live a comfortable and frictionless life, would be very insensitive and downright false.
https://meena-srinivasan.medium.com/comfort-stretch-panic-a-framework-for-growth-91370c658c44
https://www.rd.com/article/why-you-should-do-things-the-hard-way/
https://heewinkim.medium.com/shoshin-the-beginners-mind-that-keeps-learning-forever-7bd230394260
Tea Time With Amber 