Humps, roadblocks, …detours are a part of life, but they’re humps not Himalayas. Sometimes we get to a hump in Life & we turn the hump instantly into a Himalaya- the hump we face goes from waist deep in reality to a 22,338 foot mountain in our minds.
Soooo many things in Life are humps miraged as a mountain. They look that way to us for a couple of reasons: 1) It’s something that we’ve never faced before so we think that we’re no match for it. 2) We’ve faced a similar situation before & resulted in a shit sandwich- so we think we’re about to eat another. It’s all Bullshit.
Isn’t it crazy how we have a Redbox Rental state of mind sometimes?! You know the Redbox rental that’s right outside the store where you can rent a DVD for less than 2 bucks? We rent our problems much the same way- we walk our happy asses to the box covers of Life’s problems & we select a cheap B Flick negative rental and we play that negative movie, over & over in our minds. It’s impossible working for something to positively manifest while thinking something negative.
Look,you may be facing some big mountains in your life- no doubt, but I am telling you that you need to look at your problems through different lenses. First, stop calling it a “problem-” I call them challenges, Eckhart Tolle calls them situations. Whatever you call it, call it something other than a “problem” because often the mere utterance of the word problem stunts us right in our tracks- 1 minute we’re galloping through Life & the next scene we’re like Lt. Dan from Forest Gump, flailing around handicapped with our legs blown off. Try using the word challenge or situation & watch your whole perspective change. Your mind will shift to that of a solution mindset and will begin looking for ways to solve it by tinkering and poking at the situation.
The 2nd thing I want you to realize is that mountain that you’re facing is nothing more than a bunch of humps stuck together- they’re like big words…I tell my daughter all the time that big words are nothing more than small words clumped together. Break the bigness down- declump those ganged up humps…you don’t get to the summit in one leap.
So back to the beginning…
Humps, detours, & roadblocks are necessary in life-they’re needed for you to grow- I mean think about it, would you voluntarily subject yourself to pain, hardship, embarrassment, recourse, and ridicule? Hell my hands would be in my pocket and sure as hell not raised to be subjected to the harshnesses of Life, but we need the stimulation- i.e. kicked in the ass, in order to grow. I don’t like it any more than you do, but I know in retrospect I’ve liked who I’ve become and what I’ve accomplished on the other side of the bleakness. Yes it was painful…yes it was lonely & dark… no it wasn’t fair…but it was necessary. There isn’t a single one of us reading this that cannot look back at some cataclysmic event and not say yes it was hard, but I learned so much.
So I need you to do 2 things: 1rst charge the mountains in your Life one hump at a time..and (2), don’t look at every hump as a Himalaya.
You’ve got this!
I’ll see you on the Blacktop!
(HT to Deepak Chopra)
The Sales Life with Marsh Buice 