In this lesson, we're going to talk about challenges you might have faced and how you've overcome them. So I'm going to give you some vocabulary and expressions. So that when you're talking about challenges with people and times, you've overcome them. Maybe you're talking about challenges in an interview, right? When people ask, Tell me about a challenge you've overcome.

You'll know how to do that. All right. So let's get into it.

So when you face a challenge, that means you face it and you're ready to overcome it. That means you're dealing with it head on. So you can say facing a challenge head on. Meaning you are head to head with this challenge and you are ready to attack it in any way that you can. You are facing the challenge.

You're not running away from it. You're not shying away. But you are taking all of that courage within you and you are applying the skills that you need to be able to overcome that challenge. And when we successfully are able to get past that challenge, we say to overcome a challenge. Right. So if someone asks you, what's the time that you overcame a challenge?

Tell me about a time that you had to overcome a challenge. How did you successfully face the challenge? What did you do in order to make that challenge now a thing of the past and to conquer it? So you might be going into the different action steps you took, what the results were from that, and then what you learned from that, right?

Because with every challenge, there is a whole set of learnings. There are what I like to call teachable moments. Right. If you see something as a failure, you can rework that and see it instead as a challenge that you overcame and you learn from it. Right. And that's a stepping stone to your next success. So facing a challenge head on and being able to overcome it is a success in and of itself.

You might have to push yourself. So when you push yourself, if you are telling yourself, okay, I can do this, I'm going to be getting out of my comfort zone a little bit, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to push myself because I know I have it in me. I know I have what it takes to overcome this obstacle, and I'm going to do what I need to in order to have a successful outcome.

So that's when you push yourself. You might have to endure discomfort, right? That discomfort might look like pain and suffering. And those are not sensations that we as humans elect to feel. But a lot of people can argue when there are people who are elite athletes or they're Olympians or they've achieved a certain level of physical fitness and endured a lot.

Rest assured that they're putting their body through a lot of excruciating pain and sometimes even suffering. It's not easy to be competing at that level, training at that level. So if you talk to elite athletes or maybe you yourself are an elite athlete, you know that success doesn't come without enduring pain and enduring suffering and ultimately enduring what we call discomfort.

So if you are up for those feelings and you know that in order to overcome that obstacle, you need to go through that pain and suffering, then you're not going to have too much of a hard time with this because, you know, it's par for the course. But sometimes in order to over overcome a challenge, we need to get into the right mindset.

We need to say, okay, I know that for this timeline, for this time, that I'm going to be training or working on my language skills or prepping for a new job or learning another skill that I find challenging at the moment. It is going to require some pain and suffering and discomfort and to be okay with it because you know that you get from A to B to C to get up that mountain.

It's not easy, but it is so rewarding in the end. You feel so good and you can give yourself a pat on the back because you know that you did a job well done. The other way of talking about this is saying I competed against myself. I looked in the mirror and I saw that it was a person who's my competitor.

Right. And it shows that you're not in the mindset of comparison. You're not trying to compare yourself to others, you know, oh, that person got that on the telephone score, or they got this on the choke, or they got this on the aisles, or they achieved that milestone. We're going to get to the word milestone in a minute.

But you're not comparing yourself to others. You're comparing yourself to yourself, and you're looking at how far you've come and thinking about how much further you want to go. Right. So it's about really thinking about where you want to be. And you might even talk about, well, I did this. I came from this place. I came this far in my journey and this is where I plan on going this is what I see for myself as being attainable and achievable.

Right? With a little bit of a push and a little bit of a shove, I'm going to get there. And so having this mindset is extremely important when you're overcoming challenges. Okay. So Milestone is a big achievement and it's somewhere on the journey, right? Because a lot of times with overcoming challenges, it's not always about reaching the final destination.

Sometimes we don't even know what that final destination is. It's about that journey. So, for example, you might want to have better fluency. You might want to be more communicative, more fluent. I think a lot of language learners have that goal in mind. I know that for me, as a multilingual person myself, fluency has always been top of my list with my other foreign languages.

And so when you're thinking about it, you don't want to get caught up in that day that you're going to become fluent, because that's always going to be evolving. You're going to even now you might be fluent, but there is a day and time when you might be even more fluent than you are right now. But if you celebrate those milestones along the journey, it's going to make the journey that much more rewarding.

You're going to want to stay on that journey. You're going to want to be in it to win it. And you're not just going to be thinking about the end game, the final destination, because, again, one that's pretty abstract. Even though you might have the goal of speaking, you know perfectly. What does that mean? Right. That's an abstract concept.

Was perfect. You might not be perfect to the next person. Do you see what I mean? And so making sure that you're celebrating those moments along the way is very important, right? It's similar to, you know, a YouTube channel. When you're seeing your subscriber base grow, when you're achieving certain metrics and you're looking at what's happening with your channel and you're seeing it grow, there are points in it where you can say, Oh, well, we reached a thousand subscribers.

That's amazing. And you celebrate that, or we reached 100 likes for each video and you are celebrating that, right? You're not getting caught up in oh, that day when I reach 5 million subscribers, it's more about the journey because we are in the journey for longer than we are at the destination. So if we rewire our brains and think, okay, how can I enjoy this journey?

How can I enjoy the challenges that are also going to be part of this journey? And then also making sure that I'm cognizant, I'm aware of celebrating the milestones. Then you're setting yourself up for success. And no challenge is too difficult or too big for you to overcome. So having that mindset is really important. And of course, the reason we're talking about this is because it applies so beautifully with language learning and building your communication skills and really any type of professional and personal development that you want to do, be it training right in a gym or training in some sort of program, right?

You want to improve your design skills. You do a design bootcamp, anything where we want to be better than we are today and better than we were yesterday, we're going to face challenges and we're going to have to be okay with the discomfort and we have to be happy to be on that journey. That's what counts. That's what matters.

All right. So I hope that you took away a few key points from this lesson. I hope that it comes as some comfort to you knowing that you can achieve anything, really. And I mean that if you put your mind to it, if the motivation is not there, then you might have to reassess the goal. You might have to reconsider the challenge.

Maybe you switch gears. Maybe you change your course of action. Maybe you come up with a different strategy and a different game plan. So if something is not working, don't give up. Just change what you're doing. And you don't have to change a lot of different variables all at once. Just change one thing at a time so that you can test what variables are not working.
For example, if you feel like you don't have time to study English, then maybe the time that you're choosing is not feasible for your schedule. It's not working for you because maybe you're choosing it at the end of the day, when you're really run down and you're tired from your work day or you're tired from all the activities of the day, instead maybe you do it for 30 minutes in the morning with your breakfast, and all of a sudden you're achieving your goal of practicing and training and doing your English studying every day.

So do you see what I mean here? Sometimes it's just about making small changes, small tweaks, so that you can actually set yourself up for success and tackle the challenge. So think about that as well. If something is not working, what can you do to change it and make it work? Don't give up. Keep persevering. There are things in life worth fighting for.

So be sure to think about your priorities and to find ways of motivating yourself. Because ultimately, no one else can really motivate you. You need to find that motivation from within the outer motivation. The extrinsic motivation works up until a certain point, but at the end of the day, it's all what comes from here. You need to figure out, okay, what motivates me?

What are my priorities? So maybe have that conversation with yourself first and then figure out how you can tackle the new challenge. So definitely apply this to your language skills, your communication practice. And of course, as you know, we have communication skills training for you at Explearning. So definitely check that out. I love the combination of learning and advanced English because together they are such a powerful combination.

These are skills, communication, language learning that will empower you and allow you to be more effective at communicating and also to be a better human, a better friend, a better colleague, a better leader, a better family member, a better partner, just a better human being overall. Because communication is what we do every day, and it's what makes the world's spin.

So definitely consider that. And I hope that you check it out. Explaining to cope. Don't forget to leave us a nice review for advancing was really makes a difference and it really puts a smile on our face when we see that you're enjoying and engaging with the content as much as you do. And feel free to drop a note.

You can leave a comment. You can leave a note on the Spotify Q&A in the community. And I look forward to hearing from you. All right. So I will see you in the next advanced English. So excited to have you part of this journey. Know that you're doing an amazing job. It's not easy what you're doing, but I have faith in you.

I know that you can do it and just keep on cultivating that motivation within yourself. And don't give up. Keep on trekking. You got this. All right. I'll see you in the next advancing this lesson. Bye for now.

About the Author and the Explearning Academy:

Mary Daphne is an expert in communication, executive skills and professional development. She is the founder of the Explearning Academy, a platform dedicated to helping individuals enhance their social fluency, boost their careers, and elevate their social game. Through immersive group coaching programs like the Executive Communication Lab and self-guided journeys, participants gain the social superpowers and career catapults they've been searching for. If you're ready to take your negotiation skills to the next level and connect with like-minded individuals, visit academy.explearning.co and explore the various plans available. Join the Explearning Academy community and unlock your full potential.

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