When things don't work, insisting is insane. It is not brave to try again, it is stubborn and destructive.
Granted, giving up on first try may be lazy or short-sighted, but this is not what's happening. Very real obstacles, adverse circumstances, insurmountable challenges, blocks or bad timing, or any combination thereof conspire to keep us on this side of the problem.
Acknowledging difficulties doesn't mean giving up. It means giving ourselves a better chance of moving forward, differently and later. In the meantime, we can adapt our goals, find support, sharpen our skills, psych ourselves up, and await more favourable circumstances.
There is no merit sacrificing ourselves to the North Face when we can climb all the way up from the other side comes spring.
Mysterious purpose calls us from afar, but our sense of worth and direction is here.
Eventually we find a bandwagon to climb on, to muster the courage to go somewhere, but without true affinity to the cause, we won't get past the first serious hurdle.
As we come to grips we who we are and what matters, we connect to the real thing, which couldn't have happened without that ill-fated attempt.
In a hostile world, we expect to struggle. We see hardship as a challenge, one that demands of us more than we can give and shows our inadequacy. So we insist, endure, and defeat ourselves.
When instead we look at what we can’t do as an obstacle, a problem we can solve, we can find its contours and plot a solution. We get our power back.
Scouts, researchers, and messengers provide winning solutions because they don’t throw themselves into battle, they inform decisions instead.
When thing don’t work, we can feel oppressed and defeated, or we can be grateful.
Obstacles are opportunities to connect to our purpose and what matters. Or they tell us this is not the way and there is a better time and place. Or they build our resilience and determination.
A life in service of a purpose is about doing what we can, and learning from what we can’t. Obstacles teach and expand us. Challenges happen for us.
Tackling challenges reveals the line between stubbornness and persistence, the line where insisting only creates more hardship.
Itineraries are always trials, they may be wrong, and when it happens, the determined course of action is to reassess and choose a different route to follow our direction.
Rerouting involves overturning threats, changing strategy, relying on others.
When things don’t work out, it generally means it’s not meant to be. At least not now, not with this mind set, or with this crew.
Seekers know what the right thing looks like. There is a flow, a magic, serendipity one step after another.
Obstacles happen FOR us too, not to us or against us. We are not tested, we are guided in another direction, or given an opportunity to build our resilience and our resolve.
In adversity, we loose our pretence, we sweat, show pain, or disappointment, we face our limitations.
That fragility, that lack, reveals our partners, those who stick around, show up to the task, support us, have something to offer.
Suddenly, those by-standers, acquaintances, party-crashers have a role to play and become our people - or they vanish.
An obstacle is rarely the end of the road, unless we just sit there and pretend it is.
Whether the setback teaches us a lesson, or brings us across something or someone that holds our next step, or we are now the holder of insight that will be worthwhile for someone else, our experience has value.
We cash a failure when we stop learning… until then, we just grow wiser and wiser.
Limping
Obstruction
Impasse
Trouble