photo credit: ƒreg

“The best thing one can do when it’s rain­ing is to let it rain.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The last cou­ple of days in our “neck of the woods” have been rainy ones. And this got me to think­ing about rain, and the growth that comes from it. The rain feeds the soil and all things that grow from it.

Our lives are like this. We grow when we have been “rained” on. Rain, in this case, would be all the things that come over us. Things like books we read, or con­ver­sa­tions with old friends, or dialogs with new peo­ple, or classes taken at the local com­mu­nity col­lege, or … the list can go on and on. Every­thing that we encounter is a chance for us to grow. Some­times we grow inten­tion­ally (tak­ing a course at a local school, for exam­ple) and some­times we grow unin­ten­tion­ally (unplanned con­ver­sa­tion with a col­league by the cof­fee machine, for example).

Unlike the plants and grass that grow nat­u­rally because of the rain, the growth we expe­ri­ence because of the “rain” we get isn’t always as nat­ural or auto­matic. We need to inten­tion­ally look for the growth we can get from all of our “rain”. And when we do this, we’ll real­ize that the world is ours to learn and grow from.

What a great real­iza­tion this is! See­ing the world and all of our inter­ac­tions with it as oppor­tu­ni­ties for learn­ing and growth gives you a lim­it­less future! So, go out there, expe­ri­ence what the world has to offer, then learn and grow from it. And then … go out and share, and make this world a bet­ter place!

photo credit: visu­alden­sity

“Obsta­cles are nec­es­sary for suc­cess because in sell­ing, as in all careers of impor­tance, vic­tory comes only after many strug­gles and count­less defeats.” — Og Mandino

What are the brick walls you face? How do you han­dle them?

If every­thing were easy, what kind of joy would we really get? The obsta­cles we face help us. The help us by chal­leng­ing us to think dif­fer­ently, or try some­thing new, or work with new (and dif­fernt) peo­ple, or change that per­spec­tive we have. If the brick wall we face is really worth it to us, then we’ll come out stronger for hav­ing tack­led it. Some­times the brick wall will win. But some­times, we’ll con­quer that brick wall. And in both cases, it’s a chance for us to learn and grow.

My son’s soc­cer team was los­ing pretty badly a cou­ple of weeks ago. We quickly fell behind by sev­eral goals. The kids on the team started blam­ing each other. Some kids weren’t try­ing as hard as they could. As a coach, I was frus­trated. Brick wall. At half time, we regrouped. We focused on what had went well, and talked about work­ing together as a team and trust­ing every­one to play their posi­tions. We played much bet­ter, every­one was hav­ing fun, and team­work was evi­dent. In the end we lost, but only by a two goals (after being down by many). So, the brick wall won. Or did it? We may not have con­quered it. But, because of it, we became stronger as a team. And the next week we went on to have our best game of the sea­son, play­ing with inten­sity, and really show­ing the team­work we’ve been attempt­ing to get to.

So, don’t view set­backs as fail­ures. Con­sider them oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn. We can learn much from the brick walls we face. Embrace them! Wel­come them! Grow from them!

photo credit: Melita

“A jour­ney of a thou­sand miles begins with a sin­gle step.” — Con­fu­cius

What is it that we need to do to move our­selves for­ward? We need to take action, do some­thing, put our­selves “out there”. We’re not going to get to where we want to go unless we do some­thing. Some­one else isn’t always going to do every­thing for us.

So, be ready to “take action”. You never know when a moment will present itself. Be ready. Some of your great­est moments will come from those times when you step out and just do it. Will tak­ing action always lead to what you want? No. But that’s not a rea­son to not take action and do some­thing. Lead YOUR life in the direc­tion you want to go and you will get there! Bumps along the way are just that — bumps. They are not roadblocks.

So get out there, take action, and live the life you want!