Detours in Life

“We make a lot of detours, but we're always heading for the same destination.”
― Paulo Coelho

Life is full of twists and turns that even the most knowledgeable person can not predict. The goals and visions that you set forth in your life will lead you down a path that is full of unknowns.

The journey of life will have its detours.

There will be detours encountered along the way and are a fact of life. It is how we respond to those detours, and obstacles that will determine our ability to succeed in life.

Many people will choose to allow an obstacle to cancel all plans. They will set up shop, staying where they are. Forever they will go about their new found business of life, wishing things were different.

Your life is much more than that.

Obstacles do not keep you from your goal. Take the detour and find your way, a different way to your vision or dream. Success will never be an easy path, it will take time and adjustment to achieve it. But you will achieve it if you keep trying.

Stay inspired my friends.

Stay Out of the Weeds

"Every great work, every great accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement comes apparent failure and discouragement." - Florence Scovel Shinn

Out in the distance we have set in our mind a vision of what we want to accomplish in life. Some type of achievement or goal that weighs upon our hearts and minds. You can not necessarily see it with the natural eye, but you know it is out there.

So you set out on the path, fixated on what lay straight ahead of you.

The path is at first flat and spread wide in front of you.

Sure, you may encounter a few bumps and obstacles but you remain focused. The journey will and does become frustrating. The temptation arises in you to stray off the path in attempt to find an easy way around those obstacles. But doing so, you lose sight and end up out in the weeds, in a place where you never intended to be.

The path becomes lost, time is lost, experience lost, and vision of the goal is lost as you try to find your way back. You struggle even more to find your way back onto the path towards your dream.

Maybe those obstacles on your path are there for a reason.

Maybe they are there to let you learn and adjust your vision.

If the path were easy, everyone would be standing within reach at this very moment. Staying on the path is never easy and the terrain can become quite difficult. As you climb over and through, your vision will come into focus even more. The vision will become more focused as you overcome those things that stand in your way. The vision will still be there, firmly in front of you, waiting to be achieved.

Keep your vision in sight and stay upon your path. Overcome the obstacles and do not get lost in the weeds, far from the sight of your goals. Achieve what you seek.

Stay inspired my friends.

Enduring the Typhoon

“The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.” -Molière

Sure enough, that is right where I had flown into, sitting in a 24th floor hotel just on the north side of Hong Kong. It was early on a Saturday evening as we drove from the airport to the hotel. The streets were dry, the winds seemed a bit strong and strangely there was very little traffic.

After traveling for eighteen plus hours, it took me a while to come to the realization that I had arrived just prior to a storm. A storm called Typhoon Usagi that would eventually cause the death of twenty-five people and pack 100+ mile per hour winds. I had entered into the path of an obstacle that was not standing still but about to overrun me.

The choices were clear at this point; run or endure.

The idea of running was actually not much of an option as airline flights were being canceled, trains were already scooting out of the area and getting on a boat didn't seem to make sense. So endure the storm is what it would be. The high winds, the water coming through the seals of my window and knowing that my meetings would be canceled.

All of us will encounter a storm at one point or another. Many times, the storm will come to us and we'll have to make a choice. Either we run or we endure.

When we overcome, push through or defeat our obstacles, the outcomes will be greater than you could imagine.

Stay inspired my friends!

Nicodemus Moves Furniture

"Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them." -Orison Swett Marden

My wife and I recently moved into a new home after many years residing in a former house. It was a challenge for us as it would be for anyone. Change of any kind will do that to you. It can create anxiety, doubt and obstacles you may never have thought about. For us, this change was planned and it gave us a reasonable amount of control over that change. Some people are not as fortunate.

Change is sometimes thrust upon us by circumstance.

For this particular move, we hired a moving company famously and simply known as Two Men and a Truck. Two guys and a big truck show up at your house to help you move from one place to another. It was a perfect solution for me as I get a bit older, the lifting, the heat, the up and down stairs takes its toll. Having two younger guys doing the heavy lifting worked out great.

One of the guys was a 23 year-old named Nicodemus; Nico for short. He informed me that yes, he had indeed been named after that Nicodemus. So it had peaked my interest to hear more. I soon learned through the small talk of the humidity, heat and long day that he was married, with a small three year-old daughter and going to school working to earn an Associate's Degree in electronics.

As the work day ended, the paperwork was being drawn up, we sat at the kitchen table talking. I find it soothing that even though we had no food on the table, we were gathered at a table where so much is shared. It is here I learned that he had attended two years at a west Georgia college after he left high school.

What he said next set me back in my chair.

His short college career mimicked my own in many ways and as I listened, I couldn't help from being drawn back in time. You can read about my own similarities in Changed Lives. But simply put, he dropped out of college to support a new family. Now at the young age of twenty-three he has a beautiful three year-old daughter.

Nicodemus talked a little bit about the obstacles he has had to overcome. He spoke of circumstances of his own doing and others that life throws at us. It is his daughter and wife that continue to be his driving force as he puts it. So he works days moving other peoples furniture and nights going to school working on that degree.

There will be more circumstance, more obstacles to overcome I told Nicodemus. I gave him encouragement as I talked of my similar road to where I am today, sitting at that table, talking of success and victory. I told him that the day will come when he is not the one moving the furniture. It will be success that he finds, as all of us can by walking through the obstacles that enter our lives.

He was grateful for the encouragement and as he was leaving I asked him if he knew what the name Nicodemus meant?

In the heat of the mid-afternoon, he turned to me, smiled and said, "Of course I do. It means 'victory of the people'." With that Two Men and a Truck drove away in the light rain.

Will you overcome the obstacles in life or cower to them in fear? I say be fearless and push through to victory, to success.

Stay inspired my friends.

Overcoming Obstacles

"Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph." -William Butler Yeats

I have faced obstacles in my life, challenges that could have stopped me dead in my tracks. There have been the moments of complete frustration when a car broke down, no money to pay for repairs. There was a time when I was stocking shelves wondering if I could ever do more.

There has been illness, death, divorce and a list of others obstacles placed by circumstance in my life. Each one of these seemed insurmountable at the time. Each might as well have been a deep canyon separating me from where I was to where I wanted to be.

What first?

Well into my years when these obstacles appeared, I fretted and worried tremendously about my abilities. I questioned myself, I blamed others and felt like giving up. What I immediately failed to realize each time, is that I had overcome so much before.

I started to ask myself why it is I always went immediately to defeat. Doing so only made the obstacle bigger, giving it more power over my life than it deserved. So believing that "this too I shall overcome" became the first thing to tell myself.

What next?

I began to tell myself that I will make it through, over, by, around, or anyway I could. As humans we are innately creative in finding ways to overcome and survive. And that is what you do, you poke, you prod, you explore every option.

Eventually you will find a way to climb the mountain or to walk around it. You might even find a way to move the mountain out of the way. What ever method you find, keep pursuing, keeping pushing through and you will find that the obstacle is not insurmountable.

What is behind you?

As you move past the obstacle in life, go ahead and look back, but only once. Look back to see what you accomplished. Look back and tell yourself that you did that, you can do anything. But do not dwell on it too long.

Many will stop and admire the accomplishment. They will marvel at the success while all the time failing to continue their forward progress. Use the experience as a means to carry you forward. What you have learned from the experience will prepare you for the road ahead.

What lay ahead?

What lay ahead? Life of course. Your future, more circumstance, more unforeseen obstacles, more effort. But a great life and success also exists out there in front of you.

The journey we take in life is going to be full of many different experiences. Some of us reach complete success, but do we really? Most times the success is the journey itself, always moving forward, always living life.

Keep overcoming, keep moving forward, and stay inspired my friends.

Looking Beyond

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." ~Matthew 3:24

Its amazing what can happen when our path becomes blocked by trouble or pain. Some will look and simply sit down on the side of the road. So many of these roads are littered with the shanty buildings of those that have given up.

Others though will see the mountain and have the ability to believe in something beyond it. They can see what lay beyond the obstacle and use faith to guide them past it.

With the recent earthquake in Haiti, as with any major disaster; people will see the devastation around them and simply give up. But there will be many that can see the vision of a new country. Of rebuilding a hospital or a grocery store. They see their new home where now only a pile of rubble exists.

Your problems could be simply finding that job, someone to love or getting beyond whatever troubles you. It is your own personal mountain; your own personal boulder on the road to where you want to be. See beyond the obstacle and believe in it.

Then begin your trek across, around, over or through it. There are many different ways to achieve success. All you have to do is keep trying. Pretty soon you'll leave those shacks built by others along the road. A clear and wonderful path will lay before you.

Take today and work through what you have. Tomorrow will present greater opportunity for you and yesterday is gone...so let it go. Overcome your obstacles and achieve.