Life is a journey and… it’s a destination. The destination is death, of course. Whether you believe in heaven or some other form of afterlife, death is certainly a punctuation point that we may want to acknowledge. It helps to define the finite manner of our existence. (You only have so much time and it’s a lot less than what you think.)
Throughout this journey we will have struggles and obstacles all along the way yet you’re still headed to that destination. The struggles and obstacles that we’ll be facing is what I want to talk about today. Not the struggles themselves but how you deal with the struggles you choose and how you make sense of the struggles you don’t choose. I believe struggles are meant to be faced and learned from and not necessarily be the journey or the destination.
There have been times where I was in struggles that I didn’t choose. This can still happen today but it’s much less likely. This isn’t what I’m referring to. What I’m referring to are the struggles that we manufacture for fun, for adventure, out of boredom, or through unconscious sabotage because we’re afraid of traversing and evolving to the next level.
The struggles we don’t choose still have the same opportunity to instigate growth we just don’t have the option to have them or not. We may try to not face them but they’re still there. Like I said last week we still get to choose our attitude and effort in that adventure.
In the last few weeks I’ve talked about priorities. (I talk about priorities all the time.) If your struggles aren’t coming up while in pursuit of your highest priorities then they’re not high quality obstacles and is often a strategy so you don’t get to see the deeper challenge and face the bigger lessons.
The quality of our struggles often parallels the quality of our priorities.
So the struggles that we choose to put in our path ought to have a quality to them that instigates learning, examination, and shifts. There’s nothing of quality in choosing to struggle with an attachment to things we can’t change.
This is often just a distraction.
This far we’ve talked about throwing rocks at those dogs but what about those of you/us that sit down and pet them? Who else cozys up with those obstacles and just wants to have a cuddle? And hang out for a while, all day or far too long.
Yep, this is often another distraction.
What are your priorities?
Where are you distracted?
What are you attached to that keeps you distracted?
How do you stay focused?