Obstacles and Their Overcoming

 

Just as a question asks to be answered, as a pain calls out to be healed, so too an obstacle beckons to be overcome.

Imagine you’re walking down the highway of life, you turn a corner, and there before you sits a boulder of overwhelming size which blocks your path. What would you do?

Some persons would throw their hands up in plaintive despair. Forlorn, they might sit down before the boulder, and wait for it to move itself. It may be a very long wait.

Others might shake their heads, and just turn around. They might think they were mistaken when they took the path that lead there.

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Relinquishment and Choice: Say Yes to One, Let the Other One Ride

 

Fresh from the womb, life before us is almost unbounded potential. We are like an untouched block of granite awaiting the sculptor’s will. How will our lives take shape? Like the blow of a sculptor’s chisel, each day that we live chips away some potential. Each choice we make carves a path from among potential alternative futures. Across the span of our lives, living and choosing transform us from potentiality into actuality.

Yet when faced with a choice from among different alternatives, many of us get stuck. One of the ways in which we get stuck is analysis paralysis which I have discussed elsewhere. Here I want to address the difficulty of being unable to relinquish or let go of possibilities.

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A Life of Your Choosing

 

Too many of us live lives which we do not want, but we feel helpless to change. For some, their hopes and passions have almost expired entangled in the thorns of drudgery or unwanted situations. Others spend their days in the stupor of a thankless job in which they have no interest except a paycheck. Still other persons live in enslavement to the debt which our materialistic culture encourages. If we asked any of these persons, “Is this the life you want?”, most would emphatically reply, “No!”… and then continue on as they were.

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On Authenticity:

Another trend which is evident in this process of becoming a person relates to the source or locus of choices and decisions, or evaluative judgments. The individual increasingly comes to feel that his locus of evaluation lies within himself. Less and less does he look to others for approval or disapproval; for standards to live by; for decisions and choices. — Carl Rogers (1902-1987), in “On Becoming a Person”

About …

The Personal Authenticity Project is a blog authored by Michael Nagel MA. The Project explores the practice of personal authenticity. Your comments help to clarify the meaning, practice, and relevance of personal authenticity.