Everyone wants to overcome challenges in life.
Life is a roller coaster that is unpredictable. You can choose to accept it and enjoy the ride, learning joyfully along the way from your experiences; or you can choose to revolt against all the challenges of life, resenting every moment of your journey.
The latter robs you of any growth or progress, while the former gives you the opportunity to learn and become a better person for experiencing them.
While it may be relative to “good,” one thing is certain–”better” means change. Wherever you are, there’s always room for improvement. Even a monk strives to make himself better every day, always aspiring to become a better person.
Life challenges are a matter of course, and they can be used for your benefit. Each is an opportunity for self-improvement and personal growth.
At the end of the day, the aim is to use what you know as you grow to become the best version.
Here are six common life obstacles that you have to conquer on your way to becoming a better person:
1. Loss
Whether you lose your job, an opportunity, or a friendship, failure is an inevitable part of your life.
No matter how it happens, suffering is one of life’s greatest obstacles. It could feel sudden and disruptive. Nevertheless, loss gives you the opportunity to focus on what is truly important, so that you can keep moving forward.
Losing something you’ve had, or really wanted, can be a welcome wake-up
Choosing to analyze your loss through the prism of these problems allows you to determine the true value of what you’ve missed and why you value it.
Having a clear view of what you value and why you value it, is the secret to becoming a better person because it brings meaning to your words and actions.
2. Failure
There is not a single person alive who has not gone through disappointment. You have to fail to grow. Failure provides a convenient pace for your progress. One that helps you to assess your recent behavioral decisions so that you can make improvements.
If you lose, you get a chance to review your actions and habits, just like an athlete checks the captured video between matches.
It is an invaluable exercise to review the decisions and actions that lead you to fail. Learning how the choices that you made lead to certain behaviors and actions will stop you from making the same mistakes again.
Such a review may also uncover important details that you missed the first time that would allow you to take a stronger and more educated approach next time.
Experience of failure allows you to cultivate empathy, understanding and sympathy. The experience gives you a level of commonality with anyone who has had the same experience. These three emotions are the essential tools on your path to become a better person, as they help others to feel safe and to be seen around you.
3. Setbacks
We have many names: missteps, wrenches of monkeys, unexpected situations. But the failures are always there on our path to becoming a better person.
We’ve all encountered a slow pace of progress, a hindrance or a delay in our path. The problem is to understand why the delay has happened. What triggered the stagnation of our development or the plateau?
You can logically know all the right things to do or do, but there are those times where your conscience gets the best of you. Despite your best efforts to be a better person, you suddenly do or say something that you regret.
You may respond in a way that is negative or out of sync with your desire to become a better person. It’s OK.
These are learning opportunities. Getting a firm understanding of the types of things that slow down your progress will help you to avoid and stop them.
Resilience is a positive side effect of suffering setbacks. The path to becoming a better person needs you to be emotionally challenging.
And Setbacks are organic ways to build that mental toughness while still maintaining integrity in your actions, and a sense of emotional awareness that promotes a safe environment where others feel seen.
4. Establishing Your Moral Compass
Distinguishing right from wrong for yourself is an ever-present obstacle to life. You may be in accordance with one philosophy today, and another tomorrow.
Changing your mind is the right thing to do, and deciding where you stand is your duty. The two are going hand in hand.
Deciding what you believe is crucial on your journey to becoming a better person. Self-improvement is rooted in your own personal sense of right and wrong.
Many people are acting in line with their values and beliefs. Giving yourself permission to develop as a person means taking time to re-examine both of them. You can discover that your values and beliefs are no longer in line with your ultimate goal.
So thankfully, your assessment of the misalignment will lead you to do what is necessary to once again find your true north. The ability to correct yourself will serve you on you journey.
5. Mastering Your Mind
The mind can be a tremendous adversary on your journey to becoming a better person. It can blow up with all kinds of negative comments if things don’t go well, and it can have the ability to overwhelm you with doubt and fear–if you let it go. Mastering your mind is one of the greatest challenges of all life.
The subconscious influences the viewpoint that teaches you about how you are experiencing and interpreting your experiences with the world around you.
Unlike other things that you can assert control over after a limited amount of time, the brain can take a lifetime to master.
The goal is to be willing to do the work of mastering the mind on a daily basis, while at the same time becoming fully aware of the limitless existence of this work.
Wherever you go, there you are, so it’s impossible to hide from yourself. If your mind is unruly and unkind, then it’s going to be hard for you to become a better person, mostly because you’re not better off with yourself.
Fortunately, there are a myriad of ways to begin the task of mastering your mind. The aim is to create space for you to be with yourself in a healthy way that encourages growth.
Other common methods to facilitate focused personal time are therapy, meditation, self-reflection, prayer, intentional silence, journaling and being out in nature.
6. Overcoming Your Story
We were all a kid once. There are situations you’ve experienced that were beyond your control, no matter how serious they may be, these experiences remain with you. Such encounters are going to be part of your story.
Overcoming the story you’re telling yourself about your own past can be a life challenge.
Whether you grew up poor, didn’t have a lot of love in your house, or didn’t feel like you saw that, it’s the way you’re going around the planet. There are facts about these experiences, and there are fuzzy edges where our minds fill in the blanks.
For example, when you say, “I grew up poor and I’m always going to be poor,” that’s an example of your story taking control.
Imagine Comparatively, if you said, “I grew up poor, but now I’m working hard.
It could simply mean I always do everything I can to make sure I have all stuff I need and am happy with”–even if it’s difficult, it’s still an example of how to resolve the story.
I grew up in apartments, worried about money, feeling unworthy of what I saw around me. I thought it was normal to suffer, and survival was a default way of being — it was part of my story.
But, as an adult, I had to make a choice, between allowing past experiences to form my current narrative, or reflecting on the conditions of the present as a representation of my current reality.
While the option may be obvious, the action needed to change the narrative is daunting. It needs a sense of purpose and self-awareness. You’ve got to be willing to let go of tales that don’t serve you,
If you set aside your past to accept the present, you inspire others to do the same. Overcoming your story empowers you to accept this moment as an opportunity to write a new story–one that you’re in control of.
It’s important on the path to becoming a better person concentrating on what you can handle and letting go of what you can’t control.
Final Thoughts
Such problems are rising in life. No matter who you are or where you are, if your goal is to become a better person, you will face these six obstacles in some ways.
Fortunately, you are now able to overcome challenges in life with grace and strategy. When you continue your path towards becoming a better person, remember to let go of things you can’t control in return for being present at the moment.
Create space for healthy self-reflection, encourage yourself to re-examine your values and beliefs, accept the strength that comes from facing setbacks, allow your failures to be a source of compassionate resonance, and let your failures be a source of compassionate resonance.
Now that know what you have to overcome some challenges in life, get out there and get over those peaks, life is waiting for you on the other side.