It’s a brisk morning on January 10th, 49BC and soldiers are milling about, the air is thick with tension and uncertainty as they wait to see what their leader, the governor of Gaul, is going to do. Gaius Julius Caesar had been the governor of Gaul for the past 6 years and faced many similar foreign threats, but now, now Julius Caesar faced a new challenge. The river Rubicon stood since time immemorial as the physical boundary in which a Roman General would be required to disband his army before proceeding onto Rome. Now, Julius Caesar stood poised at the water’s edge determining whether he would take that irreversible step of crossing the Rubicon with his army intact and face a new fear and the possibility of igniting a civil war.
When corned with a problem or challenge that we didn’t expect or see coming, most of us find the courage and necessities needed to take on the problem, whether we succeed or not. However, it’s the challenges in our lives that are blocking our way from goals we want to accomplish that most people struggle with. Whether it’s taking point on a leadership role in your company, writing a book or exposing yourself in a public presentation, the known challenges are in themselves the challenge that a lot of individuals are not willing to overcome or even take on.
The Graveyard
The challenge that can be ignored will be ignored. It’s one that you take out of your pocket every once in a while to reconsider before you put it back. These are the challenges that I see so many people back down from, myself included.
We like to use the phrase “skeletons in the closet” to refer to dark secrets we have hidden. But I would propose that most of us have a closet full of challenges that we aren’t willing to take the risk on. Ultimately, these challenges end up in the “Challenge Graveyard” to die. Sure, we keep them on life support, by taking them out occasionally, considering, or possibly going as far as making some type of half-hearted plans. But in the end, you always found that excuse of why “now” wasn’t the right time.
If you want to get a clue on how prevalent it is for us to ignore challenges that stand in the way of an accomplishment, look at some of the top prevailing regrets of our season citizens and you will find a considerable portion are challenges they opted out of due to fear, uncertainty and a number of other related reasons.
A Different View
For me, one of the biggest challenges that I faced was making the decision to change course of moving to a permanent computer programming position. Though that was a distant memory, I can fully recount the fear of whether I could swim with the sharks and not make a complete fool out of myself. I could easily have stayed in the IT networking position that I was good at, but didn’t have the love for it as I did for programming. A love that had originated in college and I had continued to feed.
I would propose that most of us have a closet full of challenges that we aren’t willing to take the risk on.
The crazy thing about this challenge was not just the opportunities that were made available to me when I decided to take the challenge, but a new perspective that I had for new challenges that I would be faced with in the coming years. These were challenges that I could choose to fear, choose to put away and leave for the graveyard. But instead, with the experience of having survived a challenge that I could end up looking completely ridiculous for making, the idea of taking on new challenges was so much less daunting.
Objects in Mirror are closer than They Appear
When we come up with an excuse not to do that public speech, take point on a leadership project or put your code out there, we aren’t passing up challenges, were passing up opportunities. You never know what will come to fruition, what doors will open when you face your fears and take that challenge on.
But the one thing I can guarantee you when you start taking on challenges you had originally abandoned is that other challenges will unexpectedly start coming into view. Whether these are new challenges that you would have never conceived or old challenges that had been forgotten in your closet. Those opportunities in the form of challenges that you passed up back down the road will start to come back into view.
Remember the last time you bought a car and then started seeing how many other people had that car. Before then, it wasn’t something you noticed. When you decide to start taking on challenges you start to notice other opportunities which naturally are challenges in themselves. I do think that we subconscious block new challenges when we have repetitively convinced ourselves to believe that we’re not smart enough, we’ll look like a fool, we’ll fail and the score of excuse we continually come up with. It’s like our view of killing in the movies after repetitive exposure; we get desensitized to new challenges that come our way. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Get Off the Ground
If you think there is some secret formula to get past your fears and start taking on the challenges that you so desperately want to. I got bad news for you, there isn’t one. What I can tell you is that it will be an extremely rewarding if you decide to change your attitude towards your challenges.
Don’t misunderstand, I am not saying that there won’t be bumps, disappointments and “for the worst” endings to challenges you take on. Business ventures fail all the time, people humiliate themselves and the world’s full of haters that will let you know what they think. What I can tell you is that there are ways that you can minimize initial blunders. That’s why I can propose a strategy to help get off the ground and get your landing gear up.
1. Personal commitment
2. Quick successes
3. Support
First off, if you never commit to anything, you can’t be held reliable. So you have to start somewhere and committing yourself to making that change in how you view the challenges you have feared is the only logical place to start. Sure, who’s going to know if you decide to fall back on your personal commitment? You’ll only be a failure to yourself. Starting off by committing yourself to take on challenges you care about seriously, is the first step to new opportunities in your life.
There is a reason why the mantra “be successful early and often” is so popular, whether it materializes as part of a methodology or is harped on by mentors in our industries. Being successful early and often can absolutely make or break your ability to change your perspective on challenges in your life. So, don’t pull that big, hairy challenge that looks the most rewarding (if successful) out of the closest. Find the safest and easiest one to tackle first. Maybe it’s something simple as submitting a technical article or leading a small task on your team. The point is that you find something you known you will be successful at, and something that can be accomplished in rather short time and build from there.
Finally, you need to understand that it is OK to stand on the shoulders of giants. You will be hard pressed to find a successful person that doesn’t have some supporting cast. Whether the supporting cast knows they are support or not, there is support. Whatever industry or where ever your interests lie, there are people that you most likely revere. These are your mentors. These are the shoulders that can help you be successful in the smallest of challenges to the largest. The more you integrate them into your process of taking on challenges, the quicker and better the rewards. So find those people that you revere and make them your mentors. You know who our biggest opponent is? You know what I’m going say before you read it, but it’s ourselves. It is that inner voice, that anti-self that seems to show up and be the first to whisper why we can’t or shouldn’t take on a challenge and up until now has most likely won most of those arguments. So, when it comes to conquering that inner voice of doubt, I will leave you with the word of Nelson Mandela: “I learned that courage was not “the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear”- Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela. For Julius Caesar, to cross the Rubicon or not was his life altering challenge that he faced. Inevitably, he chose to cross the Rubicon and face all the consequences that came with it in order to reach his goals. So the question for you is, what is your Rubicon? …YOLO
Final Word