Discussion:
Effective versus Ineffective Challenges
a. Choose an area you feel that you need to challenge yourself. If can relate either to a problem situation or some unused resource or opportunity.
b. Write out a self challenge statement in which you violate principles such as goals of challenging, encourage self challenge, challenge unused strengths more than weaknesses, specific in challenge etc.
c. Then write a self challenge statement that embodies these principles.
Example: This trainee is challenging himself on a certain lack of discipline in his life.
Poor self-challenge: "You're disorganized and lazy. You room and your desk are continually messy and your excuse is that you are so busy. But that's a lame excuse. You wait until the end of the course to do the required papers and therefore their quality is poor. In some ways it is worse in your interpersonal life. You're always late. Others have to wait for you. It's a way of saying you're more important than others. You're just inconsiderate. Since all of this is so ingrained in you, you're not going to challenge - unless something drastic happens."
Effective self-challenge: "You do reasonably well in school and your social life is quite descent. However, there is the possibility that both could be even more satisfying. At school you tend to put things off, sometime to the point that rushing affects the quality of your work. For instance, end of semester papers. Since you pride yourself on giving your best, putting things off like that is not fair to yourself. You keep telling yourself it's time to get better organized, but you need to come up with a plan for doing so. What would some of the elements of such a plan be?