Ten years ago the challenges you face today would probably not have arisen for you. You were likely in a different role and you probably didn’t have the skills or experience to be able to do what you can do today. Similarly, situations that you found challenging then are probably routine for you now.
The abilities you have today are the direct result of the challenges you faced in the past. Which means that the challenges you face today are actually opportunities for you to become whoever you most want to become in the future.
You get to choose which challenges you ignore, which ones you respond to, and the ways in which you do so. So you get to choose who you become.
And there are five ways you might choose to learn from the challenges you face today:
- Apply your existing skills
Under this option you might choose to address a situation simply by applying the skills you already have. Now even a supposed ‘crisis’ becomes an opportunity for you to practice or hone your existing abilities.
. - Expand or Extend your skills
Another option would be to use the situation as an opportunity to develop new skills or abilities. Again, a so-called ‘problem’ becomes an opportunity for you to learn and grow.
. - Transform your abilities
The ultimate skill would have been to be able to prevent the current problems from arising in the first place. As Sun Tzu said, “The greatest general is the one who defeats an enemy without fighting.” So your third opportunity is to learn whatever skills or abilities would have enabled you to prevent the current situation from coming about. This is the most difficult response but it is also the most powerful. (The book explains more about how you can achieve this.)
If none of these paths seems attractive to you, there are two more options you might choose:
- Ignore the situation
You might choose to ignore the current situation and live with it. This could be appropriate if you have other, higher priorities to address. Or you might want others to learn and develop their skills or simply to take responsibility. Your opportunity here is to improve your ability to prioritise, to delegate, or to develop others.
. - Remove your skills to somewhere else
The final option is to use the event as a trigger which causes you to decide to move to a different situation: perhaps one that has more meaning for you, that better matches your needs, or that will develop or reward you better. Now the so-called ‘crisis’ has again become an opportunity, this time for you to get clearer about what matters to you most and get better at taking action to pursue it.
Together with the five types of outcome you might choose to create, this means that there are potentially ten types of opportunity that might exist in any situation — and there could be more than one option for each.
As we’ve seen, even looking for these opportunities will bring you benefits. And the more options you find, the more likely it is that you will find a way forward that inspires you, and the people around you, to long to make it happen. All of which puts you back in control and makes you more antifragile.
Are you facing any challenges today? Are you seeing them as ‘problems’ or as opportunities to choose and become who you most want to become? How many options can you find under each heading? Which way forward inspires you the most?
Adapted from The Churning, Inner Leadership: a framework and tools for building inspiration in times of change.
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(And remember: you can’t learn to swim just by reading about swimming, you also need to do the practice.)
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