Life challenges: Are you up to it?

How do you handle life challenges?

Zig Ziglar (the best book is Born To Win get it on Audible and listen to him read the stories) talks about how a doctor prescribes medicine. After the doctor has you take the meds for a couple of days he wants to know if your body is responding or reacting to the meds.

You want to hear the doctor say your body is responding to the meds. This means the medicine is doing what was intended and the reason for prescribing the meds is going away and you are becoming healthier.

You don’t want to hear the doctor say your body is reacting to the medicine. That’s like saying this is going to hurt a little. The doc is trying to say nicely that we have a problem. The medicine is causing more problems and not really fixing your original issue.

Things in life will always give us the chance to respond or react to any situation. We have a choice.

Right now I’m on the way to the interview of my life. I think it is the job I was born to do.

I would have never gotten this chance if the world hadn’t gone crazy this year and I got laid off.

I had a good job and was enjoying most of it. But it was just a job, not what I was born to do. I didn’t wake up every day excited to go to work. This new job is something I’ve always wanted to do and thought of as my dream job for years. Now I have the chance to get it.

Wish me luck on the interview.

I chose to respond to my world being turned upside down. It was one of the best things that could have happened to me in the long term. In the short run, it was painful and still is. But I can respond or react. I’m working every day on responding.

You can do the same thing.

If you simply react you are doing something someone else is pushing you towards. If you respond, you stop, think, and come up with a solution to your problem.

I learned this by doing the 75 Hard Challenge (sign up for free starters guide here). It’s made me, through voluntary hardship, learn how to respond to problems not just react to them.

Throughout the 75 Hard Challenge, I had to do multiple workouts and four other habits that had to be completed a day. When work went long, I had to reschedule my workouts. When work needed me someplace, I had to get up early to get my workout done.

You will always have life challenges. In fact, if you do a 75 Hard Challenge, in those 75 days I think you will have something hard happen to you. It will cause you hardship and work. You can respond and find a way around your problem that is advantageous to you, or you can react and just have a problem that might or might not get dealt with.

Deciding what to do ahead of time helps you do what you want during hard times. So decide right now. What are you going to do the next time you have life challenges?

Will you respond or react?

Ben Branam