This situation has been quite common with so many people I've seen and in some of my clients. People tend to get lose momentum in challenging times and eventually spiral into a hole from which they feel that they cannot escape. After some time, they begin feel secure with situation, give up, and accept problems without question.

---Living in a Hole---

Challenging times can shove you face first down a bottomless pit, if you let them. You try to fight and scratch your way out to find that, there is no way out. However, consider situation. Is it easier to climb back out way you fell in or should you look for another way out?

Realize that, as long as you try to go back out way you fell into hole, you will remain in hole. For some reason, path you were on lead you to situation, so why continue on that path, in either direction. If you're on wall of this hole, trying to climb up and out, you risk being hit by everything that falls into that hole after you. Eventually, you're knocked off wall to, once again, fall to bottom where you either have to try to climb out again or just give up and take things as they come.

When you run into such a situation, you have to find a different path or solution than one that got you there. You have to analyze where you are, how you got there, and where you want to be. Once you are confident about your analysis, make a plan on how to move forward toward your vision.

---Battling Ghosts---

Once you beat a challenging situation, you will feel an intense feeling of success. You have beaten unbeatable, and won unwinnable. However, trick is that, now that you're on other side of challenge, your life is now different. You have to determine best way to restart your life because you've lived in and focused on beating situation.

Moving forward in life after winning against a challenge is not always a simple task. It's not so much fact that you got out of situation. It's possibility of sinking back into, or creating, a similar situation because of 'comfort zone' you developed in this situation. Many times, once you're at end of a challenge, you can find yourself folding back into a similar situation because it is comfortable, similar, and provides that feeling of success.

When life began issuing challenges to me, I had no idea how to deal with them. I would fight, scratch, kick, and scream to straighten it all back out so that life would return to its previous state. I eventually became so used to fighting to 'survive' that I began slamming every nail with same sledgehammer. Since I knew this approach always worked, I would use it for every circumstance that I encountered. I began to realize that it wasn't so much fact that I was fighting to get out of problems, but I found a successful way to win against every problem that came at me. So, to ensure that I always felt successful, I began to find problems at which I could wield my mighty sledgehammer. Instead of moving forward in life toward my goals, I continually found problems that I could beat to achieve immediate satisfaction.

The one thing I realized after a while was that, life could never be what it was. It cannot be as it was one minute or one decade ago, because it is constantly changing and we are constantly growing. When you experience a change or a trauma, life changes. It will never be as it was ... life changes! Life changes through knowledge, through experience, through maturity, and through life itself. I found that fighting to maintain life as it was merely wasted time fighting for past when in fact I should have been fighting for future. I needed to focus on obtaining where I was going instead of where I had been.

---Checking out Other Side---

Cry Me A River!

Have you ever experienced this? Maybe a dream or desire that you have had your heart set on suddenly drops square in lap of some bozo that couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper bag. Suddenly, your dream is now property of someone else and all nice things you used to think about that person now just took a hike.

Did you know one of best tests of our character is when we face fiery furnace of failure? Especially when that furnace burns up our dream just inches before we take it to bank.

Many pursuits, that we chase, seem to stop dead in their tracks almost at very beginning. That's probably a blessing in disguise. If every thing we pursued, or most every thing, all came unraveled at very end, we probably would go nuts.

Just getting that close to prize creates such anticipation, that if almost all of them flopped, we would probably stop trying just to avoid emotional trauma. But, life is kind to us to prevent us from putting forth that much effort, consistently, and then see our dream land in lap of someone else.

Don't Look A Gift Horse In The Mouth!

Now, you see, you thought life was mean to you. But, other way of looking at it is; it spared us from getting to one foot line and then blowing up in our face.

I am not a huge baseball fan but I heard story of Babe Ruth and great success he had in his career. It was a super accomplishment to have hit over seven hundred home runs in his life in major leagues. But, he also struck out over fourteen hundred times.

There was a particular game that Babe struck out every time he got up to plate, except last time. And, in this game every time he got up he swung at ball so hard that he fell in dirt. A newspaper reporter told Babe he should not swing so hard. Babe said, "Ah, don't pity me, pity those poor pitchers".

Some Good News And, Some Bad News!

As I thought about my life in business I think that's about ratio that holds true; Two failures for every success. Some successes were gigantic, some were mediocre, and some were heart breaking. Of course heart breaking ones are big failures.

Some failures are labeled failures too quickly. Many times I have seen something wonderful happen long after I had destined some dream to garbage dump. Then something happened that resurrected that puppy and seemed to breathe life back into it.

At that moment a breath of life and enthusiasm seemed to overtake me and, I found myself buzzing around like a swarm of hornets to put that dream back in winners circle.

Dead As A Dodo!

I know this has happened to many people. But, why? Here is my personal observation. Many times we get so caught up in a situation we no longer can see situation. Then something happens and dream meets deadline of death.