• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Shareef Abdur-Rahim

Lessons for Life and Business

  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • In the News
  • Contact
Challenges may be uncomfortable, but you can’t grow without them

Challenges may be uncomfortable, but you can’t grow without them

If there’s one hope I have for all of us when we look back on Coronavirus, it’s that we remember it as a time that helped us learn how to adapt and change.

I don’t think there’s ever been a time that, collectively, has created such a dramatic amount of change in such a short period of time.

Jobs have been lost or significantly changed. The responsibilities and stresses of parenting have increased a lot. And extraordinary measures are being enacted to protect our health. There isn’t one aspect of life that looks like what we’ve been used to.

But in difficult times like this — just as in any difficult time we’ve ever faced — we always have two options: we can rise to the challenge or we can hide from it.

We can find ways to innovate and adapt, or we can stay the same. We can use our challenges as a way to grow, or we can use them as an excuse to stay in the same place.

No matter how severe or intense the challenge, we always have that same choice.

This is of course true for our major challenges (and lord knows the Coronavirus has given us lots of those!), but it’s also true for our little challenges — those day-to-day things that call us to adapt to new ways of doing things.

In my life, I’ve had to do a lot of adapting in two main areas: home and work.

During “normal life,” I’m typically home 4 or 5 hours a day — and that’s when I’m not traveling for work. Now that I’m home ALL day, every day, I’ve needed to pitch in more around the house. I’m cooking way more than I’ve ever cooked (turns out I make pretty good baked chicken, and tacos are a speciality, too), and I’m helping with laundry more than I usually would (which usually would be never…LOL).

I’m also on parenting duties more often as well, as my two kids, Jabri and Samiyah, tackle e-learning and just generally try to avoid getting on each others’ nerves.

At work, I’m adapting in new ways, too.

I’m having to stretch myself to communicate in different formats than I usually would, like embracing technology and showing my face on Zoom. I’ve never been a Zoom or Facetime person — I’m a private guy and much prefer to keep my face off camera — but now I’ve had to do it because it’s the only way I can see and connect with my team.

I heard in a podcast recently by four-star general Stanley McChrystal how important it is, from a leadership perspective, to connect with your team and look people in the eyes. That really resonated with me, and it’s why it’s important to me to push through my usual hesitancy about being on camera and do it anyways — sheerly because it’s important for the strength of my team.

So now, instead of having what would normally be a monthly or bi-monthly meeting, we’re meeting more frequently — pretty much every day. The meetings are shorter, but it’s important to have that time each day to connect with each other.

I’ve also been writing more, both as a way to do certain aspects of my job and also as a way to create connection with others.

I realized that in our normal working environment, people would pick up details about me and my life just based on anecdotal conversations, like when I’d say offhandedly that I had to leave work because it was my son’s birthday.

But without those opportunities to converse with my co-workers in-person, I’ve had to create those connections in other ways.

For me, that’s taken the form of writing a daily note to my team. Every day, I write them an informal email, including small details about my life. Those details might relate back to Coronavirus, or working remotely, or building morale during this challenging time, but overall, the goal is to share some information about myself and my family and provide a little glimpse into my life.

I want to help my team connect with me on a personal level in the way they would have a chance to do if we were all in the office together. I know that in order to do that, especially in these unusual times, you have to make a point of telling people things and reaching out, even if you’re normally a fairly private guy like me.

What about you? How have the changes to your normal daily life called you to adapt in new ways?

I think when we look back on this period of time, there will definitely be aspects of life that we’re so glad have returned to normal, but there will also be plenty of changes we’ve been forced to make that we’ll choose to continue doing because we’ve discovered there’s a better way

In the end, I suspect we’ll find that what many of these adaptations have truly done is changed us for the better.

Filed Under: Family, Life Lessons, Work/Career/Business

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

About Shareef
Abdur-Rahim

You might know me as a former NBA athlete. During my 12-year career as a pro athlete, I played for the Vancouver Grizzlies, Atlanta Hawks, Portland Trail Blazers, and Sacramento Kings. I was also a member of the U.S. Olympics Men’s Basketball Team that won gold in 2000.

Read More

Join My Mailing List

Life Lessons from the Court to the Corner Office...
By submitting your email address, you consent to receive informational and marketing emails from Shareef Abdur-Rahim. You may unsubscribe at any time.

Blog Categories

  • Athletics
  • Education
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Faith
  • Family
  • General
  • Life Lessons
  • Paying It Forward
  • Work/Career/Business

Featured Posts

two people on a jog

What Sports Taught Me About Health, Discipline, and Showing Up—for Life

May is National Physical Fitness and Sports Month, but let’s be honest, this conversation should never be limited to just one month or just one group of people. For a long time, we’ve treated physical fitness like it only belongs to athletes or ...

Read more about What Sports Taught Me About Health, Discipline, and Showing Up—for Life

Keep it 100% Luncheon Flyer

Keep It 100% – Where Passion Meets Purpose 

When I look back on starting Future Foundation with my wife, DeeDee, and my sister, Qaadirah, in 2001, our mission remains unchanged. We saw students with remarkable talents who simply needed consistent support and someone who believed in ...

Read more about Keep It 100% – Where Passion Meets Purpose 

BROWSE ARCHIVES

Footer

  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2025 Shareef Abdur-Rahim. All Rights Reserved.

 

Personal branded website by The brandiD