The journey of life is filled with ups and downs. The key is to figure out our strategy to get ourselves unstuck when faced with challenges. So, when you hit a challenge, what’s your go-to strategy to get unstuck? In my soloprenuerial journey, I’ve picked up a few methods to address challenges and help get myself unstuck.
I hope this blog post helps you figure out a new way to address the challenges that we ultimately have to deal with daily as entrepreneurs. I mean, life is already hard as is, but being a business owner *fist-pump* feels like there are more challenges waiting for us to overcome.
So, when you hit a challenge, what’s your go-to strategy to get unstuck?
Here are a few things I do whenever I feel like I’m stuck or faced with a challenge:
Gain New Perspective
1. When a problem arises, and I find myself stuck in the midst of its all, I have learned to take a step back from it all. I tend to get upset quickly. In the corporate/business setting, I have learned that I need to address my emotions by acknowledging them but logically positioning myself mentally to face the challenge.
Oftentimes, I listen to a podcast or read a book to get my mind off the problem. When I’m stuck in the heat of the issue, I defiinitely let my emotions dictate my thinking and that’s not productive, to say the least. Once I step back, I can come back to the challenge with a fresh set of eyes, so to speak, which means I am able to address the issue(s) I face more logically.
2. Find a mentor who has been through that challenge; figure out how they solved the problem. Those who have had success in their respective areas oftentimes share their lessons learned in the form of blogs, videos, podcasts, etc. When checking out their content, I try to see if they were stuck in the same place as I am and how they ended up getting out of the sticky situation.
Ask the Right Questions
3. Ask questions, ask groups for support and help. It’s important to first figure out the right questions to ask. It’s always nice to get a group’s thought on how to address certain issues because it gives me an array of options I might be able to use to solve the challenge.
4. Remember that “Everything is Figure-out-able.” This is so important. Life will always be full of challenges, so keeping this mantra in mind definitely will put me at ease. Remember distress is a byproduct of the unknown, of our fear.
Write It Out
5. I write out what’s bothering me about the situation, sometimes I write down what the worst-case scenario is. It helps to look at the challenge this way because oftentimes life isn’t as bad as we think it will be so verbalizing that worst-case scenario helps me “step out of it” more easily.
6. I’ve recently learned to do this trick and it’s worked wonders: I write out 10 ideas to address that particular problem. Of course, the first part of this is to figure out what the actual problem is, then listing out 10-12 possible solutions. The goal here is to come up with as many ideas as possible without being too judgmental at first. You’ll find that once you have at least 10 ideas, some ideas will be just plain bad, and surprisingly, some will surface as good ideas to address the problems with.
About 10-Ideas-A-Day
A quick note: This is a writing exercise called “10 ideas a day” where you stretch your problem-solving/idea-generating muscles with the idea of becoming what the original creator calls “becoming an idea machine”… feel free to have a google at it; or read about it here. The original writer who came up with this exercise states it way better than I can. There are also numerous blogs on people having tried the exercise and raving about it.)
How do you overcome challenges?
Recent Comments