IN life we are inspired by varying circumstances and various people. I love writing but have been procrastinating for some time now. After a chat with Primrose Goredema, a work colleague, I was stirred into writing this blog. This is the kind of conversations that fire me up and keep me going. Special mention to Tariro Chingwawala for her great feedback, it helps a lot, I am enthused by it, all the feedback I get from people about my writings and posts and the impact this has on their lives. I appreciate people who inspire me through their comments and feedback. Every person needs feedback, whether it is good or bad. I will focus on problems in life that lead us to giving up on our dreams and goals guided by my chat with Primrose.

It is not always easy to endure life's problems. We live in an imperfect world, and life is not going to be easy all the time. However, we need to start turning stumbling blocks into stepping-stones, use them as stepping-stones and climb to the place God has destined for you! Irrespective of who you are, what you do, or where you live, obstacles will always be present in life. We often look at these trials and think, “Why is this happening to me?” Instead take each test and think, “What can I learn through this situation?” Every circumstance we walk through in life can teach us and mould us if we allow it.

More so we should not beat ourselves down, frankly if we had friends that treated us the way that many of us treat ourselves, they wouldn’t be our friends for very long. Why do we do this? Why do we treat ourselves in such horrible ways? For some, the negative self-talk is so bad that it would literally be considered verbal abuse if coming from another person. Do any of these statements sound familiar? “I am not good enough.” “I know I would fail or be disappointed, so I will not try.” “I am not going to try this anymore I just cannot do it.” 

Negative self-talk can easily turn into a damaging self-fulfilling prophecy where you live down–instead of up–to expectations. It is a bad habit that could strangle any growth and needs to be dealt with NOW. This thinking is exactly the kind of destructive feedback we give ourselves.

This negative self-talk stems from past setbacks, defeats, hurts, heartbreaks, failures and disappointments. But these circumstances have a way of keeping us stuck in our tracks, unable to move forward or experience joy. It can take a radical reboot to get past yesterday. Sometimes the circumstances are just too heavy to allow us to get up again. These circumstances cloud our future. It is very easy to get stuck in the gloom of bad memories. They are emotional quicksand and exert a strong downward pull on the inner self. No matter what you face you do not have to raise your hand and surrender.

Obstacles are spread all over each person’s path, and they are there for a very good reason: to help us overcome them. They are there to help us grow, evolve, reach higher states of realization and find our way through them. To most people, however, this is not the case. They view obstacles as part of their desolation and suffering, believing that obstacles are there only to block their way and hinder them from achieving what they desire or have always dreamt of. Hence, they tend to pull themselves down.

Every successful person, the ones we tend to look to for inspiration in our own lives, has faced their fair share of setbacks before, during, and after achieving something great. The point is that you, too, can overcome whatever obstacles are in your way. And you can even find yourself in a better place. It is an adage that our life is made up of a combination of all our yesterdays, common sense tells us that to move forward, we should look back. Be careful common sense is not always common and is not always the way to go. This is so because there comes a point where indebtedness and examination of the past become gum on your psychological shoe. It sticks you in place, impedes forward motion, and, like gum, it does not just disappear on its own. You need to do some scraping. You can look to the past but do not live there.

It is hard to let go of the past in the absence of a positive view of tomorrow. You need a vision of the future. Your old story should be the stepping stone to creating a better one. Take the lesson from the past circumstance and learn from it, but do not stay in the past. Move forward, anchor yourself in the future.

There is comfort in familiarity and justification of the past. But, holding on to the past has no real benefit, it only holds you back from achieving your true potential. Sometimes, we use the past to justify our current decision-making, and that is the primary reason we do not want to let go, but we are only stifling our own growth by doing so. If we cannot get out of the story we have constructed for ourselves or we have allowed to build itself around us, the story that holds us hostage, then we cannot move on toward bigger and brighter things. Rather that story should be what spurs you toward a better tomorrow, that tomorrow starts today.

Your past may anger you, it may make you cry, it may make you feel vulnerable, it may make you feel useless, worthless, incompetent but letting go is not as hard as it may seem. Bad things happen, sure, but you cannot change the past, so why continue to perpetuate it? To let go, you have face what has happened, accept that you cannot change it and then move on. The moment you can move on and close old doors, inevitably new doors will open up, better opportunities will arise, and, most of all, you will have a better story that moves you forward, instead of holding you back.

For those of us with difficult pasts, it can be difficult to navigate through the boulders and potholes when we look back. We wonder how we could possibly move forward with so many obstacles in our way. We see the past obstacles in front of us too and we shudder. Every difficulty or disappointment you are facing WILL build your pathway. There is no better teacher of creativity than obstacles. Instead of allowing challenges to stop you, allow them to inspire a creativity in you that brings solutions to them. If you are out walking and come to a wall you must decide on how to overcome the wall. You could climb over it, walk around it, dig under it, blow it up, jump over it, etc.  The possibilities are endless. The importance is that you do not stop at the wall, become defeated and go home. The decisions that you make are what take you to where you want to go.

You have places to go and things to achieve. You are the only one who can live your life. Allow the obstacles you face to be the stepping stones for your future and watch how high you climb. When life knocks you down, get back up. And when it knocks you down again, get back up again. You can keep a negative, pessimistic attitude towards obstacles and put all blame on them for the situation you are in, or you can see obstacles in a positive way and use them as stepping stones for your own good. The choice is yours.

 “Let your obstacles be the stepping stones to a better future and not the rocks you stumble upon.” - Dominique Allmon.

Ashley D. Mwanza