We deal with many challenges in life. In our personal life, in our working life and in our social life. The challenges we face are designed to teach us important life lessons and create a better person than we start out as. How we face these challenges is the true nature of our character.
There is a time in all of our lives that the goals we seek fail to materialize in spite of all the work we do to make them happen. There are professional sports stars who retire never having earned a professional national title. There are beauty queens who do not get the crown. There are students who do not reach the valedictorian title they shot for. These are all situations where very few get to have the desired accolade and there is but a short time that one can seek after it.
How we deal with the end of the road can be just as much of a challenge as the obstacles we face during the journey toward that end. When all of the resources have been utilized. Every challenge faced, every ounce of effort wrenched from your body to fall just short of the desired goal is gut wrenching and heartbreaking. How do we face this great failure?
Maybe we should start by a change in perspective. Falling short of reaching a goal is not a failure if you have given your all. Along the journey you have gained experience, knowledge, tools and wisdom. You may not have reached the desired destination, but you have received gifts just the same. What can you do with those gifts to chart a new course?
Its okay to grieve and be upset that you did not reach your dream. Once you have done that, then its time to move in a new direction and begin a new journey that may have an even better destination end than the one you did not reach. Don't ever be afraid to go for it. In the end who you become is dependent on the direction you keep moving.
No comments:
Post a Comment