Kagan Dunlap on how to turn Challenges into Stepping Stones to Success

In life perspective is everything. The sun never actually sets or rises, it’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning around.

What you perceive and what is happening are often two different things, and can be influenced heavily by your interpretation of events. This applies equally to the nature of personal and professional challenges.

Some individuals view any obstacle as something to be avoided or quickly overcome. People who face adversity and overcome it always come out the other side stronger than they were before.

It’s important to learn how to adapt and overcome these obstacles in our path. Individuals such as Marine 2nd Lieutenant Kagan Dunlap make a habit of actively seeking out new challenges and turning them into stepping stones to success.

“I’ve always believed to get the real measure of a person, put them in a position of friction and see how they perform,” explained the Kagan.

“And for me personally, the physical and mental challenges demanded of any Marine help them become stronger and more capable of executing and completing the mission.”

As a confessed fitness and adrenaline junkie, and someone with a deep and abiding love for his country, Kagan Dunlap naturally gravitated towards life in the Marine Corps.

As someone who enlisted as a Private, Dunlap is extremely proud of becoming a commissioned officer and attributes it to his extremely focused work ethic and love of new challenges.

Dunlap explained, “While serving as a Marine I had the opportunity to put in a commissioning package which enabled to go back to college and complete a Bachelors in Exercise and Sports Science.

It was a bit of a juggling act achieving this goal of becoming an Officer, but I think the greatest growth in a person comes from facing adversity.”

One look at Kagan Dunlap’s impressive military and fitness record is enough to assure you that he’s no stranger to success.

He was selected for the incredibly selective and prestigious Marine Corps Enlisted Commissioning Education program and within 4 years he was a Commissioned Officer.

It’s Dunlap’s tenacity, never quit attitude that has also gained him an impressive reputation as an in-demand fitness coach with a diverse base of clients.

Dunlap explained, “In the Marines, we train to adapt and overcome any adverse situation and that becomes a mantra in everyday life for most of us.

Everyone faces adversity in life regardless of their job, but the Marine Corps provides us with mental tools through tough realistic training, for how to deal with adversity since that’s a large part of our profession.

Now translate this into a personal philosophy for achieving success and you have a winning formula. I train my clients to believe that nothing great can come without sacrifice, resilience, focus, integrity, and tenacity.

Challenges are there for a reason and that reason is to help us learn, adapt and become the best version of ourselves that we can be.”

When asked for his advice on how anyone can turn a challenge into a stepping stone for success, Kagan Dunlap replied, “It’s simple.

Test yourself! Do the hard things in life. Don’t take the easy way. A lot of the time the things I don’t want to do are often the best thing for me to do.

You may win that initial battle or you may lose it, the important thing is to learn from your failures and stay humble in your victories. There’s always going to be obstacles in our lives that we need to overcome.

The more adversity we face and win, the more we will adapt be stronger for the bigger battles we’ll face in the future.”