Navigating AROUND the Obstacles

Have you ever felt totally stuck in your life? And all you can see are the obstacles in your way?

As we reach for our goals and dreams, we will always find obstacles along the way.  And it is so hard to see our goal when all we’re focused on are the hurdles standing in our way.  One of the best ways to deal with your obstacles is to stay focused on the path ahead.

I learned this lesson the hard way. Back when I lived in Los Angeles I used to ride a motorcycle. I loved that bike. I rode it 365 days a year in rain or shine. I used to love taking it up into the mountains back behind Pasadena and riding it on the twisty, winding roads.

One day when I was first learning to ride, I was up on one of these mountain roads and I came around a curve to find a landslide on the road in front of me.  My brain froze and all I could see were the rocks blocking my path. The bike went right over them and I almost went down. I was really lucky that I didn’t crash.  I was terrified and shaking. It was the closest I ever came to putting that bike down.

A couple of months later I was back up there riding those twisty, winding roads when the same thing happened. I came around a curve and there in front of me was another rock slide. But this time, instead of seeing nothing but rocks, I saw a path through them. I focused on the path instead of the rocks and was able to navigate through them easily and effortlessly. What was different? I had learned that the motorcycle would follow the path that I focused on. If I focused on the rocks I ran over the rocks. If I focused on the path through the rocks then the motorcycle would follow the path that I visualized. And so it is in our lives; what we focus on is what we create.

A little while ago I heard an interview with Dan Rather who had recently retired after forty-three years of being an anchorman and journalist. He was saying that he created his success by staying focused on his destination, what he called his “North Star”.  Whether he was reporting on the war from the front lines of Vietnam or covering the racial tensions in the South during the 1960’s, he felt confident that he could work his way around any obstacle by using his North Star as a way of navigating through the course of his career. Staying focused on your goal is another way of seeing past the obstacles and remaining on the path towards your destination.

Obstacles are inevitable as we journey towards our vision, but they don’t necessarily have to stop us.  If we learn how to navigate our way around and through them we can move faster and farther down the path towards our goals. The more confident you become at navigating around the obstacles in your path, the more confident you will become when it comes to creating your own life.

It will not take long to realize that anything is possible and you are capable of creating the life of your dreams.