How Have You Turned Challenges Into Opportunities? Please Share Your Thoughts

03/31/2022

How Have You Turned Challenges Into Opportunities? Please Share Your Thoughts

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Lao Tzu

Over a month ago we invited everyone to share the kinds of challenges you were facing. Today we encourage you to share, in the comments, ways you may have turned challenges into opportunities.

In a 2016 Psychology Today article, Stephen Joseph, Ph.D., wrote that “embarking on a new challenge can be frightening,” but goes on to say that “to lead an authentic life, we need to take on new challenges that stretch us and give us more opportunities to be ourselves.“

Admittedly, challenges may be more intense for many of us now than they were in 2016, but the principle remains the same. The author asks, “Are we able to transform our fear into an enthusiasm to engage with the new challenge and learn from it?”

Donna King, author of the book, Pursuing Bad Guys: Joining Children’s Quest for Clarity, Courage and Community, turned her challenging reactions to children’s “bad guy play” into a year-long research project. Her resulting book is a courageous account of what it means to engage authentically with children. Donna writes about the new way she and her colleague approached the opportunity:

“We will listen, yes, but not simply to document. We will listen in order to connect with the children’s thinking and emotion, and to align with their intention, in a way that is not intrusive, but informed, and therefore genuinely respectful and responsive.”

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