Embrace Life as a Challenge to Pursue, Not a Threat to Avoid

Source: Rodrigo, used with permission

The ability to respond to our lives as a challenge separates us from our primitive forbearers because our evolved brain gives us the opportunity to resist our most basic instincts (though not easily). The fundamental goal behind the challenge response is to pause rather than act instinctively, deactivate the amygdala, engage our cerebral cortex, and figure out a way to act on and react to our lives in healthy and productive ways. More importantly, we now strive not only to survive, but to thrive in our lives: find meaning, pursue toward dearly held goals, experience joy, and connect deeply with others.

This challenge mindset goes beyond simply creating a physical and psychological state that enables you to direct all of your resources to removing—or at least minimizing—the threat that you may perceive in your life. Living your life driven by challenge allows you to view it as filled with opportunities to be embraced rather than potential misfortunes to recoil from. With this challenge perception, you are focused on engaging your life with commitment, confidence, and determination while minimizing counterproductive thinking and emotions such as doubt, worry, or fear. Challenge is associated with welcoming all that life has to offer and immersing yourself “hip deep” in the experiences it presents to you (both affirming and difficult), rather than obsessing about possible harm that might result. This “can do” (rather than “what if”) state acts as the foundation for an opportunity psychology by creating a positive lens through which you view and experience your life.

The challenge perspective evokes in you a vastly different emotional response than the threat reaction. Instead of the negative, unpleasant, and unhelpful emotions that are part of the threat reaction (e.g., fear, frustration, anger, and despair), challenge emotions include hope, pride, inspiration, and equanimity. These much more pleasant and productive emotions propel you toward embracing, rather than avoiding or sabotaging, your life.

In turn, these emotions activate a physiological state that better prepares you for responding positively to the complex nature of our modern-day lives. Unlike the intense and uncomfortable physical changes associated with the threat reaction (fight or flight), the challenge approach leads you to feel physically comfortable and in control of your physiology. You may feel relaxed yet energized or, perhaps, even fired up to take on your life.

This calmer condition allows your mind to be clear, open, and intentional. You will be confident that you have the capabilities to surmount whatever life presents to you. Maintaining relative calm in the maelstrom that can be normal life these days enables your pre-frontal cortex to focus on what’s important in your life: analyze possible options, connect with your values and priorities, set goals, make sound decisions, plot appropriate courses of action, and pursue them with vigor that wouldn’t be possible in the frenzied state of the threat reaction.

Responding With Challenge

Your ability to make the complete transition from viewing your life as a threat to your life as a challenge relies on welcoming and ingraining certain beliefs about yourself. These beliefs act to override the threat instinct when confronted by a difficult life situation. By their very nature, these perspectives remove the deafening alarm of threat—think Chicken Little, “the sky is falling”—and replace it with a battle cry of a challenge—think Paul Revere, “the British [opportunities] are coming.” I have identified five such beliefs that lay this foundation. One thing to note about these beliefs is that they build on one another from the first to the last.

I am competent. One of the most threatening aspects of life is the feeling of being over your head and out of control. In other words, feeling like you’re not capable of surviving, much less thriving, in your life. When you have a fundamental faith in your capabilities, you believe that you have what it takes to surmount anything that comes your way. This belief in your fundamental competence acts both as a scaffolding upon which you can build your life and as rocket fuel to propel you forward in the direction you want your life to go. This sense of competence can be both specific and general. In an ideal world, you would possess the specific capabilities to deal directly with every aspect of your life. For example, it would be great if you were a lawyer when faced with a legal issue or a physician when confronted with a health problem.

Unfortunately, specific competencies rarely align with the many complexities of life that are found in the 21st century. In that case, having a general sense of competence (“I can handle this”) provides a feeling of confidence and comfort that will allow you to constructively navigate your life and whatever it presents to you. With a resilient belief in your competence, you remove the potentially intense threat that is often associated with the perception that you aren’t capable of handling your life. You can then calmly and intentionally focus on mustering your resources to direct your life where you want it to take you.

I am responsible for myself. This belief in ownership of yourself (which starts with a sense of competence) results in your ability to see that how you respond to your life—what you think, feel, and do—is up to you and will frequently determine how your life impacts you. It prevents you from falling into a victim mentality where you feel ineffective and helpless, and, as a result, are either passive or reactive in your life. As a result, you believe that how life affects you is within your control even though you may not have control over the events that arise in your life. As such, you take responsibility for your responses, look inward for strength and direction, and decide for yourself how you will move forward in your life.

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I am determined. One of the most common reactions, when confronted by a difficult situation that presents itself in life, is to surrender to what might seem inevitable. Yet, a steely resolve and an unwavering determination are what will drive you to persist in the face of the potentially formidable obstacles that life often throws in your path. That persistence is what often separates those who survive and even thrive in their lives from those who don’t. This determination draws its energy from the two previous beliefs because, if you see yourself as competent and take ownership of your life, then you will believe that you can overcome whatever life throws at you if you persist. With these beliefs, you will harness and focus your energy with your fullest efforts toward a positive resolution of life events, regardless of potential obstacles and the uncertainty of the outcome.

I can handle adversiy. By its very nature, life is rife with adversity; whether physical, psychological, financial, interpersonal, or what have you. Your belief that you can overcome whatever adversity you are faced with is essential to seeing it as a challenge rather than falling victim to your threat instinct. In addition to the previous beliefs that lay the foundation for this belief, you can develop an “I can handle adversity” belief in several ways. First, you can cultivate this belief by reflecting on past experiences in which you’ve marshaled your resources and succeeded in overcoming adversity in your life. These experiences demonstrate to you that you were capable of overcoming past life difficulties and you’ll have what it takes this time. Second, because it’s unrealistic to think that you will have previous experience specific to every life situation you will face, you’ll need to tap into your general knowledge, abilities, and tools to handle new adversity in your life.

I can effect change. The above four beliefs act as the wellspring for the basic, yet powerful, belief that you can catalyze positive change in response to anything that your life presents to you, even when its sheer size or force may seem to preclude such change from occurring. Realistically, due to the intangible, complex, and oft-times incomprehensible nature of life today, the change that you seek is often outside of your control. So, depending on the type of life situation you are in, when I speak of change, I am referring to not only the external aspects of your life that impact you, but, just as importantly, your beliefs about your ability to choose the way you think, feel, and act in response. The belief that you can effect change arises from your experience, knowledge, capabilities, tools, and support that you bring to bear as you face your life head-on.

In sum, when you embrace these five fundamental beliefs, you create in yourself a foundation that enables you to live your life with confidence, courage, and determination, and without excessive doubt, worry, or fear. This foundation allows you to let go of your primitive instincts, disconnect from your amygdala, fully engage your evolved brain, and access the entire arsenal of capabilities that you possess. In turn, you will be prepared to respond positively to whatever life throws at you, even in the direst of situations. Finally, in adopting these five beliefs, you complete the transition from threat reaction to challenge response and are one step closer to viewing your life as filled with opportunities to create a life of your choosing.