I often say that pursuing one's life's vision by overcoming life's challenges is the road to sustainable happiness. However, dealing with life's challenges (which many of us consider anything that impedes us from achieving our goals such as failures and setbacks) can be a real problem for most of us. You see, most of us are not armed with the thinking necessary for properly handling life's challenges. Think to yourself:

How do you deal with life's challenges such as setbacks or failures?
How do you deal with the risk(s) they present?
How do you deal with the fear or anxiety that they unearth?

Well, all of these questions deal with one thing, one's willingness or ability to persevere regardless of the obstacles that he/she faces. Now, can you persevere in the face of failure, tremendous risk, or fear? Many people would answer, no. But, for those that answer yes, success awaits. While these individuals are pursuing their life's vision, everyone else waits for the failure, risk, or fear to dissipate. However, the trouble with this approach is that these issues usually don't go away. As a mater a fact, one's intrepidation and fear tends to intensify over time, as he/she points to incidents in his/her life to validate the view that the world is a scary place whose goal is to prevent him/her from pursuing his/her life's vision. Sorry to let all of those conspiracy theorists down, but this is simply not the case. As the saying goes, life is what you make it. The challenges, setbacks, and failures that occur in one's life, occurs in the lives of others as well. The difference, however, is that the "others" learn from these occurrences and are therefore better prepared to continue pursuing their life's vision than someone who fell prey to their failures and setbacks.

For those of you who are currently in the midst of a setback or failure in pursuit of your life's vision, take comfort in the fact that everyone fails from time to time, including those that we view as heroes. But you need to do more than just acknowledge that reality. You need to shift your thinking as well. Shift your thinking from simply believing that life's challenges, setbacks, and failures are a bad thing, to understanding and acknowledging that they are necessary learning experiences that will enhance the pursuit of your life's vision.

Armed with this new way of thinking, I challenge you to embrace life's challenges, setbacks, and failures, by learning from them. I challenge you to experience your feelings associated with failure and not run from them. Explore them, and then move forward with renewed vigor in pursuit of your life's vision.

Know that success is just around the corner, and that all you have to do to get there is to learn from these experiences and move on toward your goals. Remember, successfully pursuing one's life's vision is a process that usually encompasses many setbacks and numerous failures. Therefore, learning to be at ease with life's challenges, setbacks, and failures, by learning from them is essential to your successfully pursuing your life's vision. If you shift your thinking, success will follow. So, don't give up, just get to work.