When life was stressful and chaotic I would say “I’m having a challenging day today” because I didn’t want to sound like a whiner or have a negative tone. I wanted to project that I was competent and capable of meeting chaos and adversity with a “can-do” attitude. The truth is that I was pushing my way through my resistance to meet a challenge that felt “hard.”

But it came to me that I was using challenges as a way to prove my self-worth to myself and my competence to others. If there wasn’t challenge in something then it wasn’t worth doing. Or if I successfully met something easily, I didn’t celebrate my achievement and just blew right past it onto the next challenge in front of me. In fact, I rarely celebrated my success to anchor in joy or satisfaction with my efforts.

I have gained much success in my life. I have invested in my self-growth and have been evolving as a person at a steady pace. But, the price from pushing and striving to get the success out of the challenge has had an impact on my joy and happiness. I have burned the candle at both ends and wiped out my health and sabotaged my key relationships.

Now rather than associating the word “hard” with challenge, I tie the word “adventure” to challenge. Seeing challenges as an adventure feels lighter and more joyful with an element of fun and pleasure. I find that challenge that is framed as “hard” just puts me into resistance to avoid the situation, procrastinate or spin around in the mess of the stress unproductively.

So when I’m faced with resistance (aka a challenge) I ask myself “Where is the joy factor? How do I invite an attitude of adventure to keep me in more flow with less resistance? This is how I can feel the joy tickling through during the engagement. When I put attention on what I DO have as opposed to what I lack, I can tune into my true happiness in the moment.

Visit my amazing new website at www.Directions4Wellness.com to see all the resources there including my free ebook, “How to Grow From Your Stress.”  Schedule your Evolutionary Blueprint session with me to gain clarity of how you personally are wired to evolve and grow so you can shine brighter with your gifts. sara@directions4wellness.com