Challenging yourself vs pressurizing yourself. The human mind was designed to be challenged, not pressurized and that’s why you often suffer stress because of the intense pressure you’ve placed on your mind and body. Pressurizing yourself causes a big strain for you.
But In this article, you will learn a lot about challenging yourself vs pressurizing yourself.
You might have been pressurizing yourself, but you aren’t aware of it. You might have been pushing yourself to the extreme, but you think of it as “normal”
When I was in high school, I loved to take the spotlight and attention. Always enjoyed to overwork myself to get to the level of “teacher’s favorite student” and I actually enjoyed it anyways, but I thought I was challenging myself. But then, things started going south-ways as I gradually became an adult.
So I always had this mentality of “I have to please everyone. I cannot fail, people will not like me anymore. I should always be perfect in what I do. Mistakes aren’t for me” I kept pressurizing myself day after day, but I thought I was challenging myself”
Symptoms of pressurizing your life
1. Constant Energy drain
When you pressurize yourself, you overwork yourself physically, mentally and emotionally. You are not an automated bot that can handle different workload at once. You are not an HP laptop that can open many tabs and still run fine. The human life doesn’t function well under pressure.
Extreme pressure on yourself to please others. Pressure on yourself to make mama proud. Too much pressure to succeed super-fast. Educational pressure. Pressure to always please your boss and be cool with ALL employees. And the list goes on and on.
Pressure boils you up from within. Your brain will feel it. Your mind will feel it. The body will feel it. In fact, other people will feel it.
2. You become selfish to yourself
There’s an extremely high possibility that you can become selfish to yourself. You will not care about the things that you love and really want to do, but the people that you want to please, the unrealistic goals with unrealistic deadlines that you want to beat, because of too much pressure.
The moment you start being selfish to your true self, and decide to intensely go after things that contribute little or no value to your overall life, then it’s a warning sign that you are under pressure. That you are straining your life, doing the things that you aren’t meant to do.
3. Mental Pressure
If you find yourself constantly falling into some mental illness like anxiety, depression, stress, worry, and fear, that means a particular aspect(s) of your life is deeply under pressure.
When your life is under pressure, it’s like your mental health is having a tug war, between the good and bad, between the “what’s best for you and what’s good for you” Your mind will be divided because a part of you wants to do this, because you need this. And the other part of you wants to do this, because you want it or because people/circumstances want it.
You feel you have to achieve somethings not because you need to achieve them, but because the society expects you to achieve them, and thus you throw yourself into unnecessary pressure.
What is pressurizing your life? Can you identify that thing that’s making you to lose your cool at the slightest moment? What’s that thing that’s always causing anxiety in you? The thing that whenever you think about it, you feel like a failure?
I know all you want is to be happy and still go about your life goals conveniently. But to do this, you will need to Identify what is pressurizing your life. You can only confront an enemy that you know, remember.
How to challenge your life
Challenging your life is trying to bring out the better version of yourself. It’s trying to upgrade, level up and advance your overall growth. When you challenge yourself, you set attainable goals and use some life tools like determination, focus, honesty, perseverance to help in achieving the goals.
1. Set realistic goals with realistic deadlines
There are 4 categories of people:
i) The set of people who set realistic goals, without realistic deadlines.
ii) The people who set realistic deadlines, without realistic goals.
iii) People who don’t set realistic goals and deadlines.
iv) Some people who set realistic goals with realistic deadlines.
Looking at your present goals and deadlines, which category above, do you fall into?
If you fall into any of the first 3 categories, then you are pressurizing your life.
But if you fall into the fourth category, then you are challenging your life.
When you challenge yourself, you write down goals that you can achieve, and also write down deadlines that you can beat.
Many years ago, I will say “I want to be a millionaire in dollars, one month after I start my company” This is an example of a realistic goal, without a realistic deadline. A pressure.
“I want to live in planet Pluto in the next 2 years” This is an example of an unrealistic goal with an unrealistic deadline. A pressure.
“I want to learn digital marketing for one year” This is an example of a realistic goal with a realistic deadline. A challenge.
When you set goals, always give yourself time to achieve them. Don’t rush the process. Don’t pressurize yourself. Set goals, give yourself time to achieve them. This way, you will work under pressure and you will instead, challenge yourself well.
2. Set monthly strategies to achieve long-term goals.
Challenging yourself vs pressurizing yourself-You might want to challenge yourself by setting a long-term goal. You know.. a goal that has to do with your future finances, family, business, investments, etc
But the question is, are you drawing closer to those goals every month?
“I want to invest $200,000 in the agricultural industry by 2027” This is an example of a long-term goal.
You can set monthly strategies like “I will save up some tens/hundred of dollars every month. But by doing this, you are setting monthly strategies to achieve your long-term goals. This is called challenging yourself. You are not only following your investment goal, but you are bringing up a new culture of savings. When you challenge yourself, you advance yourself in other aspects of life, bringing up new and positive characters and behaviors and that’s one of the many positive effects of challenging yourself.
Have you set monthly strategies for your long term goal(s)? Are you drawing closer to your goals every single month? Are you one month closer to your goals? Ask yourself. You challenging yourself? Are you setting goals that challenge you? Ask yourself today.
The difference between challenging yourself and pressurizing yourself
Challenging yourself vs pressurizing yourself. It’s important to know if you’ve been challenging yourself or if you’ve been pressurizing yourself and you weren’t aware.
1. Challenging is setting realistic goals and deadlines. Pressurizing is not.
When you challenge yourself, you become happy and true to the goals you set, because they are achievable and have a good deadline. But when you pressurize yourself, you set goals that might not be achievable and even if they are achievable, the time duration is short, thus causing you to work under pressure. When you challenge yourself, you conquer life’s challenges.
2. Pressurizing is mentally, physically and emotionally draining. Challenging is not
Pressure in your life will cause you to have fatigue in the three main aspect of your life “mental, physical, emotional) and you will not live the peaceful life that you’ve always imagined. But challenging is friendly and gentle. You won’t overwork, you won’t overthink, you won’t over-set-goals. You will go at your own pace and time and you will leave an happier life than that of a pressurized person. You will let your goals inspire you
3. Pressurizing is not challenging. Challenging is not pressurizing.
The worst thing you could ever do to yourself is pressurize yourself and hide under the umbrella of “challenging yourself” While they might look similar, they have very vast differences and they are not the same at all.
Looking at the symptoms of pressurizing yourself (the top of the article) and examining the ways to challenge yourself (bottom of the article) you can clearly see that there are major differences and mistaking any could mean playing with your mental health.
Conclusion
Challenging yourself vs pressurizing yourself. The first step to eliminate pressure from your life is by identifying it firstly. What are the pressures? Where are they coming from? Who are they coming from? What are their effects on me?
Need help trying to identify your pressures? You can reach out to us.
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Thanks for reading and always believe in your dream