Tag Archives: challenge

Don’t Stop Walking

Posted on by
Reply

chromatic-forest-deviantart

I found every single successful person I’ve ever spoken to had a turning point.  The turning point was when they made a clear, specific unequivocal decision that they were not going to live like this anymore.  They were going to achieve success.  Brian Tracy

I want to grow.  I want to be better.  You grow.  We all grow.  We’re made to grow.  You either evolve or you disappear.  Tupac Shakur

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.  Nelson Mandela

Good things are coming down the road.  Just don’t stop walking.  Robert Warren Painter, Jr.

Those things that challenge the worst in us tend to strengthen the best in us.  Richelle E. Goodrich

It’s our challenges and obstacles that give us layers of depth and make us interesting.  Are they fun when they happen?  No.  But they are what make us unique.  Ellen DeGeneres

Although I’m a big proponent of formal meditation – for the discipline, joy, and calm it brings – I’m moving into an even greater phase of being fully present all the time.  It’s a heightened state of being that lets whatever you’re doing be your best life, from moment to astonishing moment.  Oprah Winfrey

From A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield

Posted on by
Reply

li-path-to-success-2

Every spiritual life entails a succession of difficulties because every ordinary life also involves a succession of difficulties, what the Buddha described as the inevitable sufferings of existence.  In a spiritually informed life, however, these inevitable difficulties can be the source of our awakening, of deepening wisdom, patience, balance, and compassion.  Without this perspective, we simply bear our sufferings like an ox or a foot soldier under a heavy load.

Quoting Don Juan, “Only as a [spiritual] warrior can one understand the path of knowledge.  A warrior cannot complain or regret anything.  His life is an endless challenge and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad.  Challenges are simply challenges.  The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.”

Spiritual maturity understands that the process of awakening goes through many seasons and cycles.

We began to see that the spiritual path asked more of us than it appeared to offer.  From romantic visions of practice, people began to wake up and realize that spirituality required an honest, courageous look into our real-life situations, our family of origin, our place in the society around us.  [T]hrough growing wisdom and disillusioning experience, we began to give up the idealistic notion of spiritual life and community as a way to escape the world or save ourselves.

Quoting Lao Tzu, “She who is centered in the Tao can go where she wishes without danger.  She perceives the universal harmony, even amid great pain, because she has found peace in her heart.

Get Rid of Your Training Wheels

Posted on by
Reply

Bicycle flickr

I often analogize my spiritual and personal development to swimming, an activity in which the improvement of technique is a life-long endeavor.  During the process of changing habitually incorrect strokes, my speed slows.  My body won’t follow my directives.  It continues to do what it has always done.  The coach will say, “you’re still windmilling” when I think I am gliding as instructed.

When I first begin to modify my way of swimming, it feels as though I am pulling through mud.  I quickly tire.  Unused muscles begin to hurt.  It’s not fun.  But I persist.  Consistency is key.  When I miss days of swimming, I don’t resume right where I left off.  I fall back to my previous set point.  The same thing that it takes to get to a goal is what you have to continue to maintain it.

I accept this fact with most endeavors.  I know that I must eat less and exercise more to lose weight and to maintain that loss.  To learn new skills, I have to study and repeatedly perform necessary functions and procedures until they become natural to me.  Yet, with life, I want change tomorrow.  I want perfection without practice.  I don’t want aches, pains, or setbacks.  I want spiritual muscles without having to do any strengthening exercises.

Many times I want someone to make things better, to make it all go away, and to tell me what to do and when to do it.  I want things to be ok right now without my having to do anything.  Where is my fairy godmother, my genie in the bottle?  Where is God?

The other day, I saw this boy on a little bicycle with training wheels.  His legs were long enough to keep him from falling.  He didn’t even need brakes.  All he had to do was put his feet down and he could stand.  Yet, he rode with assistance.  His helicopter mom closely followed him.

As I walked and watched the boy and his mom, the song “I’m Coming Out of My Comfort Zone” played on my iPod.  I thought, “This is where I am right now.  My life experiences are causing me to figure out how to remove my own clouds and my own negativity.  Giving that power to someone else is like having a helicopter mom.  It’s like using training wheels long past the time that they are necessary.

Continue reading →

Achieving Your Personal Best

Posted on by
Reply

Your Personal Best katesiner

What I know for sure is that no matter where you stand right now – on a hilltop, in a gutter, at a crossroads, in a rut – you need to give yourself the best you have to offer in this moment.  This is it.  Rather than depleting yourself with judgments about what you haven’t done, who you could have become, why you haven’t moved faster, or what you should have changed, redirect that energy toward the next big push – the one that takes you from good enough to better.  The one that takes you from adequate to extraordinary.  The one that helps you rise from a low moment and reach for your personal best.  Oprah Winfrey

Come, even if you have broken your vow one thousand times, come, yet again, come, come.  Rumi

In every challenge, there is good.  If you give up, you have not given yourself an opportunity to learn what there is in the challenge for you to learn.  The Reverend Dr. Barbara L. King