Challenges and Obstacles

As we go through life, challenges and obstacles keep raising their heads. This is par for the course. What happens after that is really determined by how you face, handle and overcome the challenges. Obstacles of the past can be the gateways to a new future. Facing a challenge on the road when you were cruising comfortably, enables you to think and rethink. What you temporarily consider as a block, can actually become a chance to rethink your options and choose a turn towards a new future... much really depends on your response and handling of the challenge.

Imagine you are making great speed and moving along well. And you are faced with a mountain. Little will be gained if you sit and curse!! It is much better to look at all the options that you have. You can climb over the mountain and go to the other side...and thus continue your journey. You can go around the mountain. Or like Manzhi, the Mountain Man, you can dig your way underneath the mountain. You can fly over the mountain, a la Lindberg. You can blow up the blockage. You can ignore the mountain and pretend it does not exist...an approach practiced by many around us?? You can turn around and head back home, the way you came. Or you can stay on the mountain and make it your home. Options are legion. Enid Blyton, the children's author, gives great practical advice," The best way to treat obstacles is to treat them like stepping stones. Laugh at them, tread on them, and let them lead you to something better".

Life is an adventure. If it is not that, it is nothing at all!!! Difficulties strengthen the mind. Know that finally a WIN is shaped in your mind. Do not dodge challenges. Be the kind of person who dares to face life's challenges and overcomes them. Have the faith that "every set-back bears with it the seeds of a come-back" (Steve Maraboli: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience). Life throws challenges and obstacles. But every challenge has the seeds of a solution, if you will look long enough and close enough. Remember, a challenge becomes an obstacle or stumbling block only when you bow before it, and give up your efforts to overcome and upstage it. Sad would be the day when we give up, or become complacent and accepting the limitations that an obstacle  has posed before us.

The lot for us humans is to strive, persevere and never give up. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who has done seminal work published in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience puts it brilliantly: “... the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times... The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen." To illustrate: for a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. Remember, "For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves.”

Hence, what I am saying to you is : There are no negatives. No impossibilities. There are only challenges. Challenges which will make you stronger and more capable as you tackle them. All that you have been through, all the efforts you have made, all the years you have lived till moment, all the roads you have taken...all have brought you to this wall. Accept the reality. Understand your situation. Acknowledge the challenge and the difficulty. But remain focussed on the outcomes, the end goal...and not on the obstacles ahead of you. Muhammad Ali, the Champion, cautions us...“Often it isn't the mountains ahead that wear you out, it's the little pebble in your shoe.” Unfortunately, this causes bigger pain and difficulty. When you start living the life of your dreams, there will always be obstacles, doubts, difficulties, mistakes and setbacks along the way. But with hard work, perseverance and self-belief there is no limit to what you can achieve!! At the end, someone or something always gives up. It is either you give up and quit or the obstacle or failure gives up and makes way for your success to come through!!

Am not saying for a moment that everything will be hunky-dory; downhill slopes all the way. There will be failures along the path. But Champions treat Failure as Feedback. They learn from every failed attempt, and recoup their energies and try something new to overcome the challenges before them. Failures are only telling us to try a different approach or a new solution to achieve your results. Sometimes you will run into brick walls. They will test you. Find a way around them and stay focused on your dream. Emblazon the fundamental truth TTT into your consciousness...Things Take Time!! Take solace in the the age-old adage: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Isabel Lopez encourages us: “If you can’t believe in miracles, then believe in yourself. When you want something bad enough, let that drive push you to make it happen.” Finally, let this remain imprinted in your mind: If you quit on the process, you are quitting on the results!!!

Let me end with a favorite quote from Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture: “The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.” 

When we least expect it, Life will set us a challenge. Understand that at such moments Life is testing our courage to face the challenges and obstacles. And in handling these difficulties, Life is also testing our willingness to change. We do not have the luxury of shutting our eyes and bury our heads in the sand. We will have to face the reality. We will have to overcome the challenge. And in the process we will have to be ready to change.

Learn. Be different. Take the teachings, that the Challenge has brought into our lives. And grow!!! Louisa May Alcott in The Little Women captures our human situation so beautifully, when she notes: “I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.”

Wishing you Bon Voyage as you board your personal flight to freedom and change.

“Per aspera ad astra"(Through hardship to the stars): vikas.