Every Investment Journey Has Its Own Challenges.

It doesn’t matter if you’re young, middle-aged, or old, every investment project can challenge you at any time.  What’s the best way to deal with challenges through your investment journey?  By developing positive habits, you can deal with anything any project gives you.

Habits of Perception

How do you look at these challenges?  Do you see roadblocks or opportunities?

It’s easier to deal with challenges when you have positive habits of perception:

• Embracing Reality
• Being on a Journey

People often create challenges where they don’t exist. When a person looks at difficulties they face with their investment projects with fear, distrusts others, or doesn’t feel they have the skills and abilities to cope, simple choices become enormous challenges for them.

The inability to deal with these challenges begins with deciding if something is truly challenging. Is your teenager’s behavior a challenge or a normal part of growing up?

Can you learn a new skill for a project at work or do you feel left behind by circumstances? The reality of any challenge is that it not always as bad as it appears.

Sometimes challenges can help you to do and be better.  If you look at success and failure as part of life’s journey, challenges aren’t roadblocks.  Instead, challenges become opportunities to move forward or change direction on your investment journey.  Psychology Today magazine identified how a person perceives success and failure as a significant component of how they deal with life’s challenges.

Personal Habits

Control over yourself helps you deal with challenges. How well you control your emotions and responses depend on these personal habits:

• Patience
• Focus
• Growth

Not all challenges can be solved quickly. Life isn’t a microwave or speedy delivery service!  Some challenges take time to overcome.  Being patient and recognizing that you may need to work at a solution over time helps you deal with many challenges.

A person who can focus on the most critical aspects of dealing with challenges will have an easier time than someone who tries to do everything at once.  Some challenges need to be dealt with systematically, and people need to focus on the most important things first.  Imagine your car breaking down when you’re on the way home from grocery shopping.

You are faced with the following challenges – fixing the car, ice cream melting in the trunk, and your child being late for sports practice. In what order do you deal with these challenges?  Calling for roadside assistance first might get your car fixed in time to take your child to practice.  Once you make that call, you’ll have a better idea if you need to call a friend or neighbor to take them instead.  You can eat the melting ice cream while you’re waiting!  By doing things in this order, you still have the challenge, but you have effectively dealt with it.

Being committed to personal growth is another important habit that helps you deal with challenges.  When you look at every situation and ask yourself what you can do instead of what you can’t do, you accept challenges and deal with them better.  Practicing commitment and being willing to grow and learn to meet challenges is a personal habit necessary to deal with them.

Connected Habits

Dealing with challenges sometimes requires help and support.  If a person doesn’t build a support system, they are left without helpful resources.

 You can create a support system by:

• Being Active in Relationships
• Giving Back

Who is going to come to your aid when you face a serious life challenge? Are you confident that your family and friends will help?  The habit of cultivating and building solid relationships gives you a support system when times are tough.  If you haven’t invested in your relationships, you will find yourself alone when you face a challenge anytime in your life.

In life, people often get what they give.  If a person is known as a spendthrift, untrustworthy, or cruel, other people are not going to feel connected enough to them to offer help and support.

But if people see them as someone who gives back to the community by volunteering, donating, or offering assistance, they are more likely to help them deal with a life challenge. Practicing a habit of care and concern helps build a support network you may someday need.

You can deal effectively with life’s challenges by building better habits. How you perceive the world, your personal commitment, and your willingness to share are habits that help you throughout life.