Every year, countless professionals reach a fork in the road where they have to decide whether to take on something difficult or play it safe. The ones who consistently choose the hard path are the ones who build careers worth having. I’m not talking about being reckless or taking on every impossible task that comes your way. I’m talking about that moment when a challenge presents itself and your gut tells you it’s going to be difficult, uncomfortable, and risky, but also that it might be exactly what you need to do. That’s when you lean in rather than retreat.
The truth is that challenges are hard. They’re supposed to be. Professional challenges test everything you think you know about your capabilities, your judgment, and your ability to perform under pressure. They expose weaknesses you didn’t know you had and force you to develop strengths you never thought you’d need. But as hard as challenges are, failure or lack of success stemming from avoiding them is far worse. You can recover from trying and failing. No one wants to look back knowing they never really tried.
The way you face challenges speaks volumes about who you are and fundamentally shapes your trajectory for success. This is not motivational or philosophical, but practical. When you consistently step up to difficult situations, people notice and remember. Your reputation gets built one challenge at a time, and each time you show up and do the work, even when it’s hard, you’re sending a signal about your character and your capabilities.
On the other hand, the person who avoids difficult situations, who delegates all the hard conversations, who finds reasons not to take on the complex project, that person might have a perfectly fine career. But in the long run they’ll never build the kind of trust and respect that opens the biggest doors – the doors to opportunity and success on a higher level. There is nothing wrong with choosing either path but understand you have the choice.
Your relationship with challenges is ultimately your relationship with your own potential. Every time you back down from something difficult, you’re telling yourself a story about your limitations, and if you tell yourself that story enough times, you start to believe it. But when you face challenges despite the discomfort, despite the uncertainty, despite the very real possibility of failure, you’re building the knowledge that you can handle what comes next, that you have the capacity to meet difficulty and move through it anyway. The challenges you face and how you choose to face them don’t just predict your chances for success, they create them.
As always, this post and others can be found on my blog, Business Law Guy.