Sometimes you have to let yourself celebrate your wins. You won’t always have good news
and you need to learn how to embrace and enjoy these moments. You need to let yourself have
some fun once in a while, or else you will burn out and lose all motivation.
Sometimes you have to switch your routines, even when they’re working for you. You might
be going too easy on yourself. You have to reassess your challenges and make sure you’re
continuously challenging yourself and pushing your boundaries. You have to make sure you’re
not purposefully blinding yourself and impeding progress.
On the flip side, you might be going too hard on yourself. You might be pushing yourself
to the brink of exhaustion. You might be miserable because you’re tyrannizing yourself over
your schedule. You might need to adjust if everyday feels like torture. You should be
struggling, but not in constant pain. I told myself that I would write and read
every day. I often find myself making excuses. “Sometimes it’s not possible.” I’d
say. Sometimes I’d lie to myself, procrastinate
and never end up accomplishing my daily goals. Sometimes I won’t have an idea to write
about and will end up pushing it until I have to publish something I am not proud of.
Creativity does not come by force. You can train yourself to produce and merge creative
ideas constantly, but it cannot be coerced. The only thing you can do to influence creativity
is to gain more experiences, observe the world around you and take in a variety of ideas.
Read more books. Watch more movies. Take a walk. Talk with people.
Sometimes, instead of trying to create, you have to experience more. You need to put more
ideas into your head. You get out what you put in. These days, I
haven’t been doing my due diligence in reading the books that have stacked up on my desk.
I need to take more time to read. I need to take more time to digest the ideas and see
what kind of interesting insights I can get out of them.
I feel like sometimes I should just spend a whole week focusing on the books, take some
notes and come back with my observations. It is going to be harder to keep up a writing
schedule, since I will no longer have the entire day to myself.
When problems arise and hinder my progress, I often find myself exactly where I started.
I have no solution to deal with all the problems and happenings that occur in life. Every obstacle
seems to affect me in a different way and threatens to crush my long-term goals. How
do I deal with the numerous obstacles that will inevitably appear in my life?
One thing that I have realized recently is the fact that the obstacle is the way. The
quote is taken from Ryan Holiday’s book which draws wisdom from stoicism, the philosophy
of enduring pain or adversity with perseverance and resilience.
While you’re paving your way through life, you will be met with obstacles that block
you from moving forward. We spend a lot of time in our lives because we believe that
these obstacles should be avoided or worse, cause us to backtrack and take another direction.
When we face big problems in life, we often believe they are horrible and treat them as
unfortunate events. But what if you were meant to overcome these obstacles? What if they
were there for you to hurdle over? What would happen if you learned how to overcome
all obstacles? You would be unstoppable. Nothing would stop your way because you understand
that these obstacles are not impediments. They are not roadblocks that are meant to
be avoided — they are meant to be taken head on.
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
Life will throw things at you that will threaten to break you. It will take away the things
and people you love. You will face misfortune, pain and suffering. You have no control or
influence over what life can bring to the table.
The only thing you can control is your attitude and your behaviors.
If you control your attitude and your behaviors, you will overcome any obstacle in life. You
will not be influenced by the troubles of life. You will treat every obstacle as something
to be overcome. You will love the struggle, because you know you will learn and receive
something valuable from the experience. Even though I am starting a new chapter in
my life, I will keep on chasing my dream to become a writer. I will keep writing, reading
and learning everyday. Sometimes I will fail. Sometimes I will win.
But one thing that will never change is my attitude. I will meet my failures with compassion
and meet my wins with pride. Every obstacle that appears in front of me
will not be sidestepped. They will be overcome and destroyed.
How do you respond to the roadblocks in your path? Do you slink your head in defeat and
walk back the way you came, or do you analyze the situation and plan out how to get around
and solve the problem? “There is always a countermove, always an
escape or way through. No one said it would be easy and of course the stakes are high,
but the path is there for those ready to take it.”
Holiday tells us that obstacles don’t inhibit success, they create success and that readers
should see “through the negative, past its underside, and into its corollary: the positive.”
The decisions you make when faced with difficult obstacles will define you. So come face to
face with each obstacle that you come across and do your best to overcome every single
one of them.