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Today's
Meditation:
In
my experience, I find that most people give far more power
to the obstacles in their lives than they really
deserve. These obstacles may seem to be overwhelming
before we actually start dealing with them, but once we
start to confront them, they're usually not that bad.
Once
when I was in the Army Reserves, a small group of us was
ordered to clear the snow from an area of the motor pool.
One sergeant objected strongly, saying that there was so
much snow that it was an impossible task. He kept up
the argument for a good ten minutes, saying that we would
be wasting our time and effort on an impossible
task. An order is an order, though, and we went out
to shovel snow (I was looking forward to the fresh air, so
it was fine with me whether it was an impossible task or
not). Within half an hour, we had completely cleared
the area.
The
impossibility of the task had been created in this man's
mind-- the task itself wasn't nearly as daunting as he had
built it up to be. All he had to do was actually
stand up to the task-- start on it and stick with it until
it was done-- and he found that the task wasn't nearly as
difficult as his mind told him it was.
Personally,
I enjoy obstacles. They challenge me to think in different
ways in order to accomplish a given task. To me, the
harder the better, and even if I don't accomplish
something, at least I'll give it my best effort and learn
something valuable in the process. If I defeat
myself before I even start by giving the obstacle too much
strength, though, I'll get little to nothing from my
efforts.
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