Looking For a New Challenge
It could be argued that society is moving backwards; that as adults, we're becoming more child-like—demanding instant and varied pleasures to make us happy instead of developing the maturity to delay gratification. But really, what's wrong with that? We have the technological innovations and resources to support our immediate desires and, if we do not align ourselves to the predominant culture, we will trail behind those who embrace it and find ourselves feeling left behind and lost.
The problem is that instant gratification leads to instant dissatisfaction. The more we experience, observe, and consume, the more we want to experience, observe, and consume. It's a vicious cycle that panders to the lowest rung on our hierarchy of needs and, after a while, we yearn for something more meaningful—something that represents our uniqueness and value as human beings.
So, in this rich mix of possibilities and opportunities, how do we begin to find new challenges that will say more about us, hold our attention, and satisfy our long term needs?
It is difficult to make these sorts of choices by yourself. You might find it helpful to find a trusted friend or coach who can act as a sounding board and reflect some of your thoughts and feelings back to you. This will help you objectify what is currently subjective and then you may be able to piece figure our what to do next.
By definition, change brings a period of adjustment that can be quite depressing. What has probably happened is that you have let go of something that previously defined you and have not had time to establish yourself in your new field. You could think of the transition like a trapeze artist who has let go at the end of one swing and is suspended in thin air as she turns to catch the trapeze at the beginning of the next one. There is a period where nothing is holding her but the momentum of her maneuver. This can be quite disorientating, but if you remind yourself why you made the choice in the first place and focus on your end goal, you will find that your momentum will carry you through.
Try listing your many ideas and see if you can find the golden thread that joins them all together—or the several golden threads. If you were categorizing these ideas, what would be the major headings that you would put them under? Do these headings bear any relationship to each other? By doing this, you will slowly draw some common themes from your ideas, which will point toward the type of challenge that would reward you.
You may be able to find something outside your usual activities that you can run in parallel. It need not be anything particularly big or life changing. Sometimes a small adjustment in our lives can make all the difference. So start small. Find something that you can easily accommodate in your schedule and put some energy into that for a while. Experiment with different things. When you find something you are passionate about, you will certainly find a way to fit it into you life.
Finding a new challenge is not something that you can do in haste; it needs careful consideration and clarity of thought. Here are some areas to consider in your quest for a new challenge.
It is important that you know yourself well enough to choose a new challenge that will be aligned to your motivations, values, and beliefs. Think about the assumptions and attitudes that drive your life. Look at the patterns and see if you can determine what holds all your experiences together. If you can identify what drives you, you will be able to make a good choice about what will work for you and what will not, while avoiding the fantasy that so often characterizes an escape from boredom.
Look back over your career or life path and see if you can identify what made an experience great for you and what made it unhappy. In this way, you will be able to determine the ingredients that your new challenge will need to have to ensure its success. Be clear about whether you are running away from something, in which case your decision may be tainted with desperation, or whether you are pursuing a dream, in which case your decision will be positive and optimistic.
You may have reached a life-stage transition. Perhaps your desire to find a new challenge has been triggered by an event or series of events that have put your situation in a new light. Look around yourself and see if you can pick out what has driven you toward finding a new challenge. At least if you know where you are starting from you have some certainty.
If you are clear about your end goal, you are more likely to make a sound decision about what your new challenge should be. Do you want to:
- learn something new? Perhaps would like to build your knowledge base and develop your intellectual expertise in a different arena. This might be in the form of an academic program, a research project, or a philosophical exploration.
- develop a new skill? If you'd like to learn to do something practical that you have not done before, you may want to sign up for a night class, a training program, or apprentice yourself to someone in your chosen field.
- create a legacy? Do you want to create something that you can leave behind such as a book on your life or family history, a piece of art, a charity, or a political victory?
- experience a new culture? Perhaps you would like to travel and experience different cultures. By seeing the world through the eyes of others, you can develop new perspectives, try out different belief systems, and experiment with your own boundaries. You might want to do this through volunteering. This is a way of seeing the world, experiencing new cultures, and doing something constructive and values-led.
- have an adventure? Are you yearning to climb a mountain, try an adrenalin sport, trek across Nepal, travel unaccompanied through Asia, walk the Great Wall of China? There are many adventure vacation organizers who would be happy to help.
- meet new people? You may want to increase your professional or social circles to see what opportunities can be born of new acquaintances and contexts.
Once you know what your intentions are in respect of your new challenge, you will be in a better position to identify some specific goals and create a plan going forward.
Once you know your starting point and what your aspirations look like, albeit vaguely at the start, you can try different options on for size. You will probably not be short of people to advise you, so mine them for ideas. In fact, often those that know us well have greater clarity about our motivations and capabilities than we do.
In order to find a new challenge, you could look to the people in your network and ask who is doing something that inspires or attracts you. This may not be exactly what you want to do, but it might give you some clues about the sorts of things you could do. Alternatively, you could think about who in the public arena you admire and whether your admiration suggests anything to you about what you want to do or be known for.
If you can identify what the decision breaker is, you will be able to focus on the important issues first. Then everything else will fall into place as a matter of consequence? Ask yourself what you need to make your decision a success and how you will get this. You may need to ask for some support or resources from someone in your network, or you may just need time away from your full-time employment with a route back after you have satisfied your craving for something new.
It can be quite daunting to launch yourself into a new challenge, especially if it represents a complete change from what you are used to, so think about the ways you can retrieve the decision if it fails to work out. This is not meant to be negative, but sometimes having an exit strategy is sufficiently comforting to encourage you to stay with the new challenge long enough to get over any resistance you may initially feel.
However you plot your route to a new challenge, keep an optimistic eye on your future horizon and use positive energy to drive you toward something inspiring and rewarding.
Sometimes our frustrations can trigger a rapid decision to pick up a new challenge and make a radical change in our lives. This can result in our not spending enough time exploring the possibilities that are likely to succeed, and we may find ourselves languishing in the after effects of a hasty and imprudent decision. Try to leave yourself a way back to your starting point before investing everything in a new challenge.
One precipitous decision can easily lead to a series of others as we try to correct our first mistake in choosing a new challenge. This can end up with us bouncing around like a pinball as we expend energy and effort trying to find a satisfying new challenge on the basis of chance. If this is happening to you, withdraw from the game and take stock of what has happened, analyze what it was that went wrong, reorient yourself, and start again. It is better to stop and accept that things have not worked out as you wished than to perpetuate the situation.
Basing your decision on the wrong premise is an easy mistake. If you are making a decision on the basis of an emotional response to a situation, you may make an incorrect analysis and try to fix something that is not really the problem. Emotion screens logic. and although you need to feel emotionally attuned to your decision, it also needs to sit on a sound basis. Get someone to question your assumptions and play the devil's advocate to make sure you have thought through everything properly.
Taking up a new challenge and finding that it is not at all what you expected suggests that you may not have done your research thoroughly enough. If you can, try to get a taste of what you think you would like to do before making any irrevocable decisions. Doing the research is not just a paper exercise but an experiential one too. There is nothing like putting your feet in the shoes of your new challenge to feel what it would be like to do in earnest.
Bolles, Richard N.,
Knight, John D.,
Johnstone, Judith,
Isbister, Nick, and Martin Robinson,
Jansen, Julie,
Wills, Judith,
Cross-Cultural Solutions: www.crossculturalsolutions.org
Alliance for Conflict Transformation: www.conflicttransformation.org
Bottom Line Secrets: ttp://bottomlinesecrets.com/blpnet/article.html?article_id=27567