Just how many doors closing on us is enough times for us to realize we are going in the wrong direction?
What will stop us from going down a path that seems to be fraught with resistance?
On the way to a personal development course I had book months earlier, I faced numerous challenges. The automated train fee machine overcharged me and would require phone calls, yet I’d dropped my phone that morning, and it wasn’t functioning which also meant that I couldn’t use my maps on the phone to find the venue. While on the train consulting the printed map I’d brought just in case, I was looking at it too long and missed my station. From the next station I just wandered aimlessly and was lost as I tried to make sense of the street signs facing in the same direction. The forecasted rain was coming down so heavily that my umbrella was turning inside out, my clothes were heavily wet, my boots came unglued, and I was wet into my socks, and NOW I was late. Oh what to do?
Part of my mind told me to ‘Give up, go home, get warm, and call back those two friends who wanted to hang out today.’ Tempting ideas.
I gave up the idea of walking to the venue and chose to go back on the train to my car, yet when I began to drive, the rain was torrential, and I needed to park on the side of the road until it subsided. More delays which could be seen as omens to get me to cease my aim of the day.
How many signs to ‘give up’ must I go through in order to decide it was time to end the push forward, face the seemingly inevitable wasted time and desire, and return to the safety of where I’d come from?
Yet, the weekend had been on my radar for months. I’d made child-sitting arrangements which is sometimes hard to do, and apart from that I really really wanted to be there!!
So with an increased passion to reach my goal, I drove through almost impossible weather only to discover three parking stations closed and only street parking through flooded gutters available.
Despite all my preparations, changes in directions which were out of my control, an environment that was close to unmanageable, I finally arrived at the conference. I was wet, very cold, somewhat embarrassed, and yet I was accomplished. I had made it there. I had arrived to the spot where I wanted to be and where I learned I needed to be.
The two day affair was one of the best I’ve been to. I networked, made friends, learnt an immense amount, experienced growth, learned strategies and joined a community of like-minded learners.
Had I not pursued my goal and if I had re-turned to my ‘usual’ place and way of doing things, I would not have gone, gained or grown.
And isn’t that what our journey into life and even business is about?
We need to find new roads to travel, face doors that are closed that will not open for us and fight the darkness or fog around us as we push through situations that we hadn’t expected. And all this in order to get somewhere that we haven’t been before.
My experience that morning may have seemed long and drawn out to the reader, and it seemed endless to me too at the time, however, in hindsight it was merely one and a half hours of what is now in my past and gained me the ground I needed to prove that persistence is ‘always’ going to be needed as we drive ourselves through the challenges to get to somewhere good.
Persistence is an energy which signals our body to keep going, no matter what and until we get to that goal.
What a beautiful reminder I experienced that cold wet and gloomy morning, and what a thrill it was to reach a new bright experience on my journey.
Take Care and Be Open to Universal Possibilities, like the Lotus.
