Chad Schapiro: Challenges

When asked, "How do you develop mental toughness in life?", my response might sound negative at first when I answer, "Always be prepared for a surprise. The surprise might be a negative surprise. Something is going to happen in your day, whether you have no one home all day, have your cousin tell you you're crazy, or whatever -- something is going to happen... And the key is your ability not to take mole hills and look at them as mountains."

Problems are a normal part of change. Things are changing so rapidly that there are going to be problems you face. So you must look at failure as an event, not as a person. I'm not a failure. Maybe I've had a failure or a temporary inconvenience. I've had a stumbling block, and the idea is to turn the stumbling block into a stepping stone, and step on it instead of stumble over it.

So look at failure as the fertilizer of success.Fertilizer stinks, it smells. You see that guy putting it on his lawn and you say, "Wow, that guy fertilized his lawn, he's trying to make it better." You fertilize your mistakes. You don't wallow in them, lay in them, roll in them; you pick yourself up off your mistakes and learn from them. You try not to repeat that same thing again. But you look at it as a temporary inconvenience, as a detour -- a detour in life -- not as a failure.

These challenges are really opportunities that we have got to go through to strengthen us into the people we need to be to grow larger in our own awareness. We are going to grow to our success through these challenges and be a light that guides others through the same adversities they face in their lives.