Why do we run away from challenges?

According to Wikipedia, ” A challenge is a general term referring to things that are imbued with a sense of difficulty and victory.” Challenges require courage, skill, presence of mind, ability to think on the spot and many more such qualities. Are people running away because they don’t have them? Are people scared to face challenges? Do people want to always take the easy path? Lets see.

A challenge could be man made or some event which may have conspired to create a particular issue as a challenge for someone. A lot many of us are ready to face challenges head-on. We feel that tackling challenges keeps us motivated to do greater things in life. We feel that if we are prepared for the difficulties and challenges of life, then we can easily handle anything else. So many of us love to take things as a challenge to complete it to the best of our abilities. We feel that we work best when under pressure.

But then there are some who are ready to forgo a challenge. Why would someone do that? I spoke to many people and got many interesting reasons for the same. How many of you agree with these?

Safety First Approach: Why take up a challenge when you can take the easy path? Who will you blame if the result of taking a challenge is failure? Why waste so much energy and time on something which may not even succeed? These are the many questions which come to mind which makes us take the safety first approach in life.

Scared: What if we fail? If the odds of succeeding a very less, lets not do it. So many of us leave a challenge at the start or midway only because we are too scared and lack courage to see the upcoming result. Sometimes we may fail. But at many times, we refuse to even try to succeed till the last moment because of our lack of courage.

Family, Society, Work Life: I have a family to take care off. What will society think about this? Why try to use a new solution for the client when we can do it the easier way? There are so many times we face challenges during our family and work life as well as in the society. But instead of facing them head on, we try to avoid them through hell or high water. Whether being scared of what society would say or trying to make sure that our family isn’t harmed in any way, we try our best to run away.

Enjoying Life: Let’s chill out dude. Why take so much tension when we can do it the easy way? There are a particular set of people for whom life is all about partying, clubbing, enjoying, drinking and chilling out. They have got things on a platter and don’t even know whether a word called “Challenge” exists. They believe in the phrase “Work Less. Party Hardest.”

Obviously many of these are legitimate reasons for not pursuing a challenge. But then, Isn’t life all about tackling challenges all the time? Isn’t life about facing your fears? Isn’t life about achieving something when you are least expected to?

Yes, there are so many of us who live or prefer to live life like a bed of roses. But is that all it is? There are many of us who have pursued challenges and fallen by the wayside. But have gotten up to again move on and fight. And that is when I feel, a life is well lived!

Try pursuing a challenge. The taste of victory is really sweet. You got to feel it to believe it!!