What Stands In Your Way? - Grasshopper

There's a famous quote from Marcus Aurelius:
"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."

Years later, writer Jane Lotter put it this way:
"Obstacles in the path are not obstacles; they are the path."

And poet Robert Frost offered perhaps the most practical advice of all:
"The best way out is always through."

Those are wonderful quotes. They describe the problem beautifully.

But they leave me with one question:

How?

Those quotes are what I call directives without direction.

I'd like to offer you a direction.

Sometimes you know exactly what's standing in your way. But more often, you don't. Something unseen has been blocking your progress for years – maybe even your whole life. You can't remove what you can't see.

The good news is there's a part of your mind that already knows what's in the way. The challenge is learning how to access this storehouse of solutions.

Here's a very simple exercise.

When you have a few quiet minutes, imagine yourself walking down a peaceful path through the woods.

Before long, you come across a huge tree limb blocking the trail. Then you notice a chainsaw resting on the ground, almost as if it had been left there for you. You pick it up, cut through the limb, and easily clear the path.

You continue walking.

A little farther on, a giant boulder blocks your way. Since this is your imagination, there's also a large forklift sitting nearby. You climb aboard, lift the boulder out of the way, and keep going.

Soon after you reach a wall of thick brush that's completely covering the trail. But then you spot one of those oversized industrial weed wackers you see on TV infomercials. It slices through the brush in seconds, opening the trail once again.

And in the very near future you arrive at your destination.

That's the entire exercise. It only takes about five minutes or less.

Here's why it works.

Your conscious mind may not know what's blocking your progress, but another part of you does. As you repeatedly imagine removing physical barriers, your mind begins making the connection to the unseen obstacles you've been carrying . . . for God knows how long. It starts clearing those, too.

And like most worthwhile things, this isn't a one-time fix. It's something you'll want to repeat.

Think of it like whitening your teeth. The dentist gives you the initial treatment, then sends you home with a kit you use over X amount of days. The results come from repetition.

It’s an easy exercise to do. And I wonder how soon you’ll do it . . . and find your way through.

All the best,