You Get to Choose How to Handle Life’s Obstacles
Many can’t be avoided, so you get to decide what to do with them.
I’ve been doing medieval fencing for about 35 years now. I fence in both single combat (one-on-one) and melee combat (teams of two to more than a hundred on each side). A key statement I learned when I began practicing melee command, was this:
“No plan survives contact with the enemy.”
This applies to life in many ways. That’s because change is the one and only constant in the universe and utterly inevitable. It can, will, and does happen. When it occurs, obstacles to plans tend to wind up in your path.
Life’s obstacles come in many shapes and sizes. Some are mountains, others are molehills. There are obstacles you can simply go around or step over, while some require major detours. But no matter who, what, where, how, and/or why you are, obstacles will be part of your life experience.
Sure, some can be avoided. That’s part of why it’s important to mind your diet and exercise, take care of your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health, vaccinate, and avoid known detriments like cigarettes and crack. All of these can throw obstacles in the way of your life path.
No matter the case, you get to choose how to handle life’s obstacles.
Some obstacles you see coming
Maybe you don’t know the specifics, but sometimes you can see the obstacles ahead. For example, if you’re working on becoming a doctor, you have a lot of obstacles to work through before you get the MD. If you start your own business, you know that obstacles to success will appear along the way no matter what you do.
There are many situations where you might as well be actively walking onto an obstacle course. You know that to get from here to there, you will have to move through, around, under, and over various and sundry obstacles. That’s just how it is.
When you see them coming, you get to choose and decide how to work with them. Over or under? Through? Around? Choose a wholly different path? These are all obstacles you can plan for and work with (or through).
Some people strive to avoid obstacles while others go right into them. Han Solo willingly chose the asteroid field over the Imperial fleet, while Luke balked at raising his X-Wing out of the swamp with the Force. Two obstacles, two different approaches.
Whatever the case is, some you see coming, and you will actively choose and decide what to do with them. Or at least, when you do, you empower yourself and direct your life experience.
Some obstacles come out of nowhere
These tend to test you more than the obstacles you see coming. That’s because they tend to derail plans and paths, creating uncertainty.
Such obstacles include unexpected job loss, car accidents, injuries, the deaths of loved ones, and the like. All things that just happen without rhyme or reason. Life in motion.
When these obstacles present themselves, you’ll have an immediate reflexive response. Odds are it’ll be negative. Anger, resentment, fear, disgust, sadness, possibly hate. Shit happens, and you react. Welcome to the human condition.
After that immediate visceral reaction, however, come the choices. Stay in that negative space, move out of it, choose to learn from it, or some combo therein. You get to choose and/or decide the next steps.
The trouble is, no matter how much you might want to be prepared, there are always obstacles that will catch you off guard. Again, this is the inevitability of change. Shit happens; the air can get sucked out of the room, moments of joy can turn to tragedy, and so on.
This sucks. Nobody likes unexpected obstacles that take them off their path. But unexpected obstacles will appear, no matter who, what, where, how, or why you are.
But you still get to choose how to handle life’s obstacles.
Conscious awareness and active mindfulness
Ultimately, your life is yours to live. That might seem obvious, but I think a lot of people can’t fathom this. They believe they have to do “X,” be “Y,” live as dictated by “Z,” and so on. Stand with the tribe or get exiled off the island.
Sure, there are some standards that are good for everyone in a given society. Green meaning go, red meaning stop, laws against killing that guy because he chews his food too loudly, and so on, maintain some necessary order. But beyond those bits, life as you know it is yours to live.
You get to decide who, what, where, how, and why you are. Obstacles or no, you have the power to be empowered to make your own choices and decisions.
(Yes, I recognize many have extra challenges due to our society’s bullshit. Choices and decisions still exist, but with added challenges.)
You have the power to be consciously aware of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions. Ergo, you can choose and decide what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what your intentions are, if your approach is currently positive or negative, and what actions to take or not.
Through mindfulness, you get to choose and decide how to handle obstacles, both those you see coming and those that take you by surprise. It is mindfulness that empowers us. You can work on how to handle the obstacles you encounter in your life along the way.
Life is full of obstacles, but you have the power to choose and decide what to do when you run into them. How will you choose to work with the next obstacle you encounter in your life?
This is the seventh-hundred-sixty-seventh (767) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share my philosophy because I desire to make a difference in the world and help as many people as I can to find their empowerment with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to share and/or repost where it might do good for you and others.
The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.
Also, please check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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