Challenge: The Joys of Achieving Mastery and Control

An element of challenge contributes to the excitement and joy had in many experience offerings. Managing to overcome a challenge the individual has set for himself/herself may be the key to the value created by several experience offerings. Overcoming the challenge is closely linked to a feeling of mastery and satisfaction with oneself and a source of pride and identity. Subjects do indeed appear quite aware that they have to make an effort, get involved, push themselves though their fears to gain the benefits of the sense of having achieved something. Furthermore, there often is a proportional relationship between the size of the challenge and the size of the positive reward felt when overcoming it.

As we remember from the flow model, a flow activity needs to have the right balance of giving people a task that gives an opportunity to use and stretch skills and abilities while not creating too much anxiety to feel sure of failure. It should not be so easy or obvious that it becomes uninteresting, nor so hard that they do not dare to try. It is only by having the right balance between the subject’s skills and what the challenge requires that focus and flow can be achieved and maintained over a period.

Challenges Come in a Great Many Forms and Shapes

Some challenges are more physical, others more mental, and many are a bit of both.

 Tests of courage or perseverance

 Learning new skills

 Calls for problem solving, creativity, imagination

 Competition against others or oneself

 Letting chance determine the outcome

 Letting go of control, trusting destiny or others

In all forms of challenges the outcome is not given; a positive or negative result is not known beforehand. The outcome is unknown because one does not know how either one’s own skills, the skills of others or other external factors – including lady luck – may influence the outcome. In many personal challenges it comes down to a question of whether one can

The youngest of the interviewed subjects, a girl of ten, had some great comments directly illustrating this point. She had just participated in a workshop held by LEGO where she learned to program robots. As a matter of fact, she had turned out to be a great programmer and beat her bigger brother at it, which she was pretty thrilled about. With a ten year old, I did not directly ask if she found the task to be a challenge. A bit more indirectly I enquired whether she had found the task to be exciting and/or stirring.

Was it so that you thought that it was exciting?

Yes. When he (the instructor) tried it, it was like; “Oh, will I be able to do it?” I wasn’t sure if I would manage it.

So you were unsure if you would manage at first? And then when you managed, how did you feel then?

It was... it was then that it started to be very much fun!

(Theater, male 42, Norwegian)

When it comes to some extreme sports activities and other high adrenalin adventures, challenge naturally comes up as a factor, as well as the joy and other positive effects of overcoming the challenge). These challenges are often a test of courage of sorts, forcing one to face something that one fears.

Here I am talking with a subject about why she wanted to do the diving course previously:

Yes, I had this period when I sought out things that provoked anxiety … I had decided I wanted to do some different things that involved challenging myself, because I realized that I wasn’t really old enough yet to retire, so then I just had to do something about it.

Was there anything special at that time that made you decide to do it?

Yes, I turned 30.

You turned 30, OK. So, could it be called a small self-realization project?

Yes, I think so. Absolutely! It’s like, you’re not older than you feel you are.

No, and 30 is really old, right…

[laughter]As I said…

But, just to double check, you felt you were…

I wanted to challenge myself on something I was afraid of. The starting point, this thought of keeping one’s head under water for a long time; that made me anxious. Yes, so that became a sort of challenge.

(Diving course, female 41, Norwegian)

The fear may be because it’s a completely unfamiliar situation. The fear may be due to a risk of some physical harm, as well as the fear of just being made to look bad or inferior when showing one’s fear or intense emotions and feeling like a fool because of it. The French/Capetownian went straight into charmingly explaining his fears during the event of our “elephant encounter”. As described previously, we were given a bucket of apples for hand feeding the elephants. This was done either by having the elephant pick the apples out of our hand by using their trunk, or by placing the apple way up into their very large and wet mouth.

There was one huge male elephant, and one baby boy (the mother was supposedly a moody

one and therefore not suitable for being hand fed by strangers and hence kept a few meters away, but close enough for her not to worry about the baby.) I mentioned to him that I thought he had looked as if he enjoyed himself, and that he had commented that it had been be a pleasurable experience. He confirmed this and continued by saying:

It was definitely yes, to be so close and to have the pleasure to touch the animal as well, and to be so close to… And the feelings as well, to feel that kind of texture of the tongues and their mouths, and of course as well, I was a bit scared, I would say. I was a bit nervous and scared… even if you say to me, you know, you were doing it as well.

I mean, the danger, and as well, I mean, maybe I put my hand in their mouth and they (mimics a biting gesture)… you know.

Asking him shortly after this if he thought the feelings he had were very intense.

Oh, definitely it is a very high… it was definitely a very high moment there. Like I said, he was…(motioning big) It was in the beginning the curiosity, I wanted to do it. When I arrived there I wasn’t too sure, especially when I had to feed, there was different emotions, there was a bit of fear. And making a decision, making a quick decision there as people were watching me, am I going to be a chicken? – what?

(Elephant feeding, male 55, French/Capetownian) (He insisted on French/Capetownian being used for as his nationality, meaning Frenchman living in Cape Town for the longest time). Furthermore, he did not want to give his age, acting shocked that I would ask him about such a thing. He was a wonderful character. I have cleaned up his rather confusing English a bit to make it more readable.)

As pointed to in the introduction, the element of challenge is by no means restricted to extreme sports that call for bravery, physical risks and strains. It comes to the surface in a much wider range of situations than one may expect, as when talking about golfing as well as visiting the theater. Both subjects brought it up on their own account – within the first couple of minutes – how challenge was crucial to their enjoyment of the respective activities.

When you were playing yesterday then, was it overall pleasurable?

Yes, very, of course, yes. I think most people who’ve played golf regularly…. one of the reasons they play is because it is a challenge. So, you know, although you don’t enjoy playing badly, it is a challenge to try and do better next time. So we keep coming back and trying again. So yes, we had a very pleasant day. It’s good exercise, outdoor life and with nice company… surely good.

Then when asked to expand on what he felt was challenging about it, he continued:

I only started playing golf for the very first time when I was 47 years old. And after that time quite a number of my friends had started playing golf. They had invited me along and I wasn’t interested, I thought it was a stupid hobby. I often used to remark to my wife if we were driving somewhere and it was raining and we go across a golf

course, and see these people playing in the rain, I’d just say to her:” Look at those fools!” ..you know. “Knocking a little ball around out in the rain, there’s got to be something wrong with them.” And it is only once I tried to do it myself, and I realized just how difficult it is and how challenging it can be. I’ve done a number of different sports that are fairly exciting and challenging, I’ve done a lot of skin diving, game fishing, I built and flew one of the first hang gliders in South-Africa, and I’ve learned to fly a glider, became an instructor of flying gliders, which is also a challenging sport, but it is not nearly as challenging as golf.

It is sort of challenging in a sort of technical precision way?

Yes, trying to do it correctly.

(Golf, male 69, South African)

There is also the challenge of letting go of control and trusting in fellow participants or destiny. The visit to the bungee jump site was interesting in a number of ways. It was the only place where I had a real problem getting an interview on site. However, the fairly short and hectic interview I did finally did manage to get done turned out to be very useful and raised my awareness of some new nuances and influential factors in what may be experienced as a challenge. Bungee jumping, this monstrous activity that I had perceived as requiring very firm control over oneself to force oneself to jump off may actually be more about letting go of control. This to my surprise was the impression, both after having observed the activities on the bridge and likewise from the interview. The participant I talked to after their bungee jump commented on the experience in this way:

What is the nicest you know... the situation out of your control and then... it ends up actually being in control once you dare sort of... it’s not as scary as you thought. Like they… [unclear] control the environment. I'm not sure if that makes sense to you.

I think so. You say like if you can give over control in one way, and not have control and sort of accept that, you will...

Then put your trust in someone else, someone else is there.

And then you feel control again, in one way. ...’cause you're handling it.

In one way, yes. …yes.

(Bungee jumping, male 25, South African)

However and again, not all challenges are related to a physical test of skills or courage, rather they may be related to engaging in some kind of mental activity and then often be much less explicit. This may be by just following the plot of a story, its twists and turns, by trying to understand and make sense of a move or at play. Actually, simply to expose oneself to very different ideas – to step into different contexts and to try to, through fictional characters, sympathize with unfamiliar motivation and actions – can be challenging.

The theater enthusiast’s comment as to why he likes to regularly watch a number of very different, often demanding, plays was this:

I think I go to the theatre because I sort of want to be challenged. I’m challenged to think differently, I’m an inquisitive person and I think I learn something from going to the theater.

(Theater, male 42, Norwegian)

The last example may not be recognized as a challenge in the traditional way, but it does indeed require mental focus and effort and the use of skills to interpret social situations and plots, even though these are skills we use in everyday. However, applying them to follow unfamiliar situations and motivations that one does not necessarily identify with represents a stretching of these skills and as such will challenge and keep the subject’s attention, and so result in flow that will give them some extent of new knowledge and perspectives if they have managed to relate to someone else’s situation and their world.

Proposition 4: Elements of challenge tend to evoke and increase experiential value (as in tasks that are perceived as hard to accomplish, but achievable).