How to laugh in the face of a challenge

Quick and easy way to defeat all challenges!

1. Go around the challenge.

2. If you can’t go around the challenge, make beating the challenge a game.

3. Document your progress.

1. Go Around a Challenge!

As I have stated many times in this website, the best way I can think of to go around a challenge is to minimize any and all pressure that you would ordinarily put on yourself when trying to achieve a goal or change an aspect in your life.

In my case, I wanted to be more fit, have more energy, improve the blood flow to my brain….etc.. So the answer for me was to exercise every day. I chose as my minimum goal the following:

Do one Pushup per day, every day, for 21 days

This is obviously not a challenge so how could I possibly say “NO?”

2. Make Remaining Challenges A Game

3. Document Your Progress

I lumped 2 and 3 together because when you document your progress, you can make a game out of it. Two birds and all…

I wanted to keep track of my progress and get some statistics. Since I had to only do one pushup per day, but could do as many as I felt like, I assumed, correctly as it was, that some days I would feel like doing more pushups than other days.

My game was simple. I wanted to calculate the total number of pushups over the entire twenty-one days. Lastly, I wanted to get the average number of pushups per day. But along the way, I also wanted to take that data and see if I could make improvements.

As for documentation, it can be anything from a dry erase board, piece of paper, or even notepad. I chose notepad. Here is what my results looked like a little over half way through the twenty-one days:

As can be seen in the picture above, on the 9th I only did my minimum pushup. I felt absolutely terrible that day, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I had felt great. The rule is to never criticize yourself for doing the minimum. Nothing matters but the one pushup per day, every day for twenty-one days. Anything beyond the minimum you decide to do is extra, and completely optional.
My ultimate game is to do at least one more pushup to make up for that one that I did on the 9th. But only if I feel like it. : )

How well does this work?

This is the funny part. I can’t remember having done a single pushup in the last 10 years before using this method. If someone had told me before I started this to “Get down and do 100 pushups!” I would have said something like “You want me to lift your house and sweep underneath it while I’m at it.”

But I did 100 pushups on the 12th. I may do one pushup again tomorrow or I may do more. There is absolutely no pressure whatsoever with this method.

Use this method with anything you find challenging and you will see drastic, liberating and exciting results.