5 Steps to Overcome All Challenges - Fight, Flight, and Freeze.

Our human system is designed for reacting to situations. Each time you encounter a challenge – depending on the nature and risk, your instincts will react in three different ways:

Fight
Flight
Freeze

There are secrets to overcome each reaction instinct. I will share with you my experience of using these reactions to my advantage when faced with challenges.

FIGHT

When you decide to fight and take on the challenge, your body will tell your mind to focus, bringing you to another level of supremacy. You will find yourself reacting and thinking quicker, faster, and stronger.

As you fight, your mind opens up its capacity to create ideas and bring you forward to the podium. This process brings adrenaline that is responsible for keeping you going and charging forward.

When I decided to be an entrepreneur, I faced several challenges and in the industry I was entering. With high amount of competitors, it was difficult to win investors over to my business. When I was at the bottom, I decided to persevere to win my battle.

Step 1: Embracing the odds – No matter what you do, there will be odds against you. As I start to embrace my odds, I pushed boundaries and thought of creative ideas to pitch to my target investors. I accepted that no matter what I do, there will only be two outcomes – Acceptance or Rejection. If I’m accepted, I move forward. If I’m rejected, I’m no worse off than when I started out. Understanding this best-case and worse-case scenario helped me to prepare for the outcome mentally.

Step 2: Stay in the fight – Perseverance is the easiest thing to do in the midst of your challenge – said no one ever. Staying in the fight will be the pivoting point to overcome them. Yes, there will be moments when your methods don’t work. But eventually, it will come to a moment of revelation where you break boundaries and explore other methods. Always remember the mantra of great entrepreneurs – Fall down 7 times, get up 8.

FLIGHT

When your mind decides to take flight from the challenge, you are not wrong to do so. We react differently to different situations, that’s the natural reflex.

Many times, I felt like fleeing from my problems too. Its human nature! But it is how you come back and push yourself further. When you flee, make it an advantage by following these steps:

Step 3: Find comfort – Talk to your family, a friend, or your mentor. Find someone who can relate to your problems and to your personality. By sharing with someone who understands you and can relate to your situation, they can share wisdom from their experience in relation to your personality. It is important to share your problems and not bottle it up. Leave your ego aside and share!

Step 4: Re-plan your strategy – After seeking comfort, you should find a comfortable space to re-plan your strategy. Strategy is important. What used to work may not work now. Be sensitive to the market, how it reacts to your product or business and re-plan accordingly. The great Thomas Edison went through over 10,000 failed experiments before successfully getting the light bulb. Why should your journey be any different?

FREEZE

When you freeze in a challenge, it means that you weren’t prepared for obstacles. We need to prepare ourselves for obstacles everyday. Freezing in a challenge is not a disaster, in fact, when you start to realise and recognise the issue – you can jump right back up to reality.

Step 5: Acceptance – Accepting the situation is the most important element at this stage. When you tell your mind to accept it, your mind will begin to unfreeze and open its capacity. Learn to train your mind to accept situations quickly no matter the situation.

When my University results were released prior to graduation, my mind froze. Because I was at the bottom of the cohort and I barely passed. I had issues landing interviews after graduating, I was unemployed for months!

But when I started to accept that what’s done is done, and my destiny lies in my hands, I took a different approach towards my career – bringing me to where I am today, running several businesses with multi-million dollar turnovers.

My friends, You might be thinking what’s the best reaction?