Challenges – Day 3

“My husband and I finally got our financial situation stabilized,” a woman said. “We knew where the money was going to come from, and we had enough each month to pay bills. My husband and I both woke up one morning— almost immediately after this happened—and decided we needed to buy a bigger, more expensive house.

“It got right down to the wire. We were in the process of getting the loan when something clicked in me,” she said. “Why are we doing this? We’re just setting ourselves up to have a challenge to alleviate boredom.

“We backed out of the deal. We didn’t need a bigger, more expensive home. What we needed to do was create a positive challenge in our lives, not financially sabotage ourselves.”

There’s a danger with challenges. Some of us might get so used to needing something to push up against and an occasion to rise to that we begin creating drama-addict challenges, the kind that sabotage our relationships, work, and lives.

“I didn’t love the guy. I didn’t even like him,” a friend said. “But I ended up marrying him—and divorcing him—just because getting him was such a challenge.”

Challenges are good. But we need to make sure that responding to a challenge isn’t the sole criterion for the decisions we make.

Challenge: The hardest thing about challenges is determining which ones to take on.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

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