How my insecurities helped me be unstoppable

I love my life.

I love my life for all the beautiful things.

The things that come easily and effortlessly.

The things that are nourishing.

The things that make me smile.

But I love it more for the things that are hard.

It is in the obstacles; the pain and the struggles where the most significant opportunities lie.

My past troubles and my current challenges show me the sharp edges — the edges that cut openings into new beginnings.

Only by living in the depths of darkness can we enjoy the warmth of cascading light.

For a long time, I hated myself for my shyness, and I punished myself in my anxiety. I put pressure on myself for being a way I didn’t like.

I expected myself, life and others to give me more — and when I didn’t get it, it felt like a betrayal.

Years of fear and disappointment, and what for?

It wasn’t until I let go of seeing things through only one lens that I was able to glimpse a new pasture.

Immense freedom just by deciding to leave this dreary cave.

I saw that my most intensely fearful days were my most shining moments. Gifts I only opened until years later.

These moments tested my character and helped me develop a more intimate understanding of human suffering that would later serve me as a coach, writer and mentor.

I saw that my tallest challenges presented me with the greatest opportunities to rise.

Why would something hard be such a good thing?

And can all hard things be opportunities?

Yes.

How?

Simply because they can. Because we can make that choice. And because ‘hard’ is just a label we stick on it.

Labels work.

But they can be peeled off and replaced.

Our experience on this Earth is not objective.

It is based on how we think it is.

“Every adversity,” as Napoleon Hill said: “Every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”

Often, a hardship will present itself, and I will fail to see a gift-wrapped within it. But I catch myself, and I am quicker to accept and love what is.

I recently approached a potential client who is the CEO of a large tech company. I failed to secure an agreement because he said he wanted to see more experience of me working with other leaders of large companies.

I stumbled my way through, and eventually succumbed to this logic. I was indeed, seemingly ill-prepared…

…If seen from one perspective.

But I could have turned that challenge into an opportunity. An opportunity to use my ‘lack of experience’ to my advantage.

It didn’t matter that I had no experience working with certain kinds of leaders. Being more open about this would have brought a refreshing honesty to this interaction on which I hadn’t capitalised.

What mattered was that I understood human nature. I knew my own hardships. I know how to bring the best out in myself, and thus in others.

I genuinely wanted him to be happy and successful.

Seeing it this way made me realise that I could have been a powerful and motivating force in his life and work.

Nothing is only one way. A challenge is never a dead-end.

We can be unstoppable when an obstacle in the road serves as a sonic-the-hedgehog-style power up, not a brick wall.

Think right now of a past regret or a current challenge.

Now write a list of all the ways that very thing was — or is — a significant opportunity for you, and you may be astounded.

This approach can be taken to all things that bother you.

We all have the ingenuity and creativity within us to find that seed and nurture it into something unimaginable.

All it takes is listening to that inner wisdom that says you can.

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If these ideas stirred something in you, I’d love to read your comment below. I read them all.

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Alex