Challenges, past and present

[Chewett]

This quest is simple, but also hard as it requires some introspection.

Think back to a challenge you faced in the past, you don't need to tell us what it was. What I would like to know (posted here publicly or via PM) is that once you had overcome that challenge (or failed to overcome it) what did you learn about yourself. In addition, is there any advice you could give someone about overcoming a challenge they may face?

You don't need to tell us what the challenge was (as some may be personal) but thinking and learning about oneself is always important.

If you would prefer to keep your experience private, feel free to PM it to me or someone else and you can be given the reward.

 

Rewards:

10 plushies per participant

[Syrian]

i learned that i can be incredibly stubborn if i feel like i'm right, and the feeling of being right comes from a reduction in my perspective due to snap emotional reactions, it's not the most exciting answer, but anyone that also has this issue understands how much of a challenge it can be to identify and begin to work on. overcoming ones own nature is always an ever evolving challenge

[Valoryn]

Being an introvert, therefore spending some time inside my head daily, has helped me maintain a vivid imagination and remain creative for countless years; in this challenge (which I won’t name), however, my mind created a very distorted reality where I was practically the one to blame for everything going wrong in the world. Isolation and spending so much time inside my head didn’t help at all and only worsened my situation.

Having a trusted and bluntly honest friend was a lifesaver for me. They didn’t hesitate to point out where I was wrong – creating illusions that nothing was wrong with me wouldn’t help either – but also where my responsibility actually ended and other people’s began, along with other aspects that were beyond anybody’s control. Seeking a specialist’s aid was also helpful to me, but the people who stood by my side since my challenge began and all the way till now have been the pillars that supported me when I needed it most and without being asked to.

What I have learned from this is how narrow my limits actually are as an individual and that nobody is meant to face every single challenge all alone. Seek support when you need it, even more so when you think you don't need it.

[Fyrd Argentus]

I've faced several challenges that spanned multiple years, that never achieved the fairy-tale outcome I'd hoped for, or the Platonic Ideal that I had envisioned at the beginning.  At these times, I've felt like I failed.  But in retrospect, the perfect outcome was never really possible and my efforts did make a bad situation ... better.  This has helped me to look to the incremental improvements that are possible in our day to day lives, and not expect to achieve the near-impossible with limited time, energy, and resources.

Edited April 24, 2022 by Fyrd Argentus

[Else]

I prefer keeping it stricly related to MD. I would say that during last anniversary when we could train the Moss to trade for a colored elemental when I finally got the Moss and saw it did not need age to level up I felt like rushing the wins for its last level in one day.
After several hours of suffering with a creature that wipes your other creatures if it gets a change I managed to get the necessary amount of wins and heat, just to discover it needed 7 days age for its last level....
I learnt that some things are not worth rushing, my advice to anyone is beforing tackling a challenge, get as much first hand information a posible.

[lashtal]

On one hand, challenges make me think [almost] everything is possible.

With enough force of will and perseverance, there are very few things one can't accomplish.

 

On the other hand, every challenge I faced taught me I'd never feel truly content.

That twinkle of satisfaction is soon clouded by a bigger challenge or, better put, the real one.

Great, you passed this tough exam, in 2 weeks you have this other one, which is the real badass. Oh, hey you got a degree, now good luck getting a job. Awesome, you quit smoking, stopped eating meat, what about dairy products?

Is there even an end, a point?

 

I learnt to approach challenges a bit like the horizon. You advance one step, it gets one step away. It  makes you advance, which is great. At the same time, it's not meant to be reached, so take it easy.

[Muratus del Mur]

I learned that people have behaviour patterns, that lead to situations they can never get out, or are doomed to repeat over and over. These patterns are rooted deep in their past, sometimes its not even them that caused the reason for their patters, but it was their anchesters. 

I discovered this about others, just to realize my patters later. Its very hard to see something about your own self, because you have to face a truth you can't admit. It is much easier to see it on others.

The challenge was to be able to think truthfully enough about myself, to notice these patters and admit them, understand them. Its one thing to realize them once, and an other thing to live with the awareness of them constantly.

If you think fast about something that might be a pattern in your existance, its easy to come up with several answers, but thats just the internal defence telling you things you can accept thinking, its not always the truth. 

Its easy to think of your flaws like "I am too good to people that hurt me"...or this kind of miss europa kind of shit, but its really really hard to think of yourself as "i am too chicken to change my partner, so i imagine that i like him/her"..or "i'm just plain ugly, not a special kind of beauty" kind of things, without imediately finding justification for the bad things.

I won't detail my 'things', ofc these are personal, but they are there, like in anybody else... and most of the time its a constant challenge to be honest with yourself.

 

What i could tell others about this, is that you should consider this a constant journey. You build something, in yourself, and every time you are honest with yourself you add an other brick. The real challange is that most of the time you realize that this construction started long ago, before you decided to be honest with yourself, and now you have to deal with design elements you can no longer change. From this point forward, its a lot one could say..but its offtopic here

 

 

 

[Rona]

I learned to choose wisely what challenges to face and what challenges to just leave alone cause they will disappear sooner or later. I learned I should not quit, if a challenge becomes too hard. And I learned that time is the most important thing to consider when trying to overcome a challenge. Time heals wounds, time makes things harder sometimes, time changes people and time will, one day, overcome us all.

And another thing I learned from that particular challenge is that people normally don't change to the better. Because changing to the better is a very very hard thing to do, no matter what one is beeing told by the media or other people: changing to the better is a really hard and long process.

[Nep]

I grew up in a very toxic family environment, which resulted in a serious inferiority complex, among other things. After I grew up and started working, I have noticed that I'm simply... doing better than the people who were criticizing me all my life, and the people I was compared to all my life. And not even by a small margin. Shockingly, it wasn't even that hard. And, I'm just getting started...

After some years, the people criticizing me started to die off, or wrecked their own lives in various ways. The cousins I was "competing" with are all living underwhelming lives, and I hardly meet them anymore. It's as if their opinions never mattered in the first place. 

Basically what I learned is that you shouldn't define yourself based on what others think. Though this can be hard when you are still a child and don't have any point of reference apart from your immediate environment. You define what you can and can't achieve. Since most people are not actors, but only reactors to outside events, you can make an awful lot of change in the world just by putting some effort in it every day. 

[Eara Meraia]

When I was young (yeah, I am not young anymore ) I was shy and not confident in my abilities. I was afraid to take credit for what I did and others, somehow, always seemed to be better, smarter, more succesful. Through a number of very tough challenges, challenges that were close to break me completely, I learned something new. I learned- I can do (almost) anything. Only limitations I have are those in my head - my thoughts, my rules, my beliefs. Some - set by myself, others - planted in by culture, family, friends etc. This realization gave a feeling of being (almost) superhuman. And, oh dear, I abused this feeling! For many years it carried me around, allowed me to do things I (and people around me) never thought possible. Until one day I realized how tired I actually am. Being driven by my mission, realizing that I have many possibilities I fought as if there was no tomorrow. Until I stopped. The "almost" of being an "almost huperhuman" got back at me and hit me hard. It took time and effort to realize that boundaries, that I so carelessly get rid of years ago, were not only limiting my actility. At the same time they were protecting me from destroying myself. I also realized that people love superheroes, because with a superhero around they can lean back and do nothing.

So now I am trying to find a healthy balance between my possibilities and limits, which in itself presents a big challenge. Setting boundaries to myself feels like limiting my freedom, feels like failing. It takes a lot of mental and physical work to say NO, to get some rest instead of go head over heels to be able to stripe away another item off my endless to-do list. Still I force myself to do it, because only when I am healthy and sane I can function, be happy and make people around me happy.

                                                             Sincerely,  not-so-superhuman Eara

 

[Chewett]

All plushies rewarded!

Since the entries are of such a good quality I have gotten approval from the Birthday and Plushie distribution committee to award 20 as an award!