"Challenging yourself" is risky and no guarantee of self improvement though. You can spend a lot of time thinking something is hard, when really you're just in a bad environment.
Precisely. This is part of what I meant by being able to take this route is a strength in itself. It takes a high degree of situational awareness and a significant amount of self-awareness to be able to suss out the differences between environmental factors and personal, and take deliberate action to maneuver yourself into an environment where you can be successful as-is yet still work to strengthen (or at least blunt) your weaknesses.
