Perspective is Gold

Stomp on for gold amid setbacks.  I will make it plain.  There are no setbacks.  There is only perspective.  Pick the one that sees you always moving forward.

When you don’t let your perspective stop you from progressing and let it take you in a new direction, you get to live in a flow that characterizes your normal condition.

Many times our limited perception and negative attitude and beliefs betray us in the way we rationalize unrealized expectations.  What looks like a tragedy of hopes and dreams quickly drowning in the perplexity of a raging ocean.  Things change.  Halted.  Flopped.   Things have to happen a certain way for you to feel better.  You start to doubt yourself, or at least question what is possible for you.   It has become a personal challenge.  Our normal condition is flow.  You got this.

In 1993, for Tyler Perry’s first play, only 30 people showed up.  He knew them.  The play failed again and again, one show a year.  Every time he would quit his job and go do the play, it failed.  He watered ONE idea: his play.  And never stopped believing in the feeling deep down.  He believed he wasn’t failing but learning and growing along the way.  He shared how the dream took on the belief for him when he couldn’t continue.  In 1998, he did the play at the House of Blues and there was a line around the building.  It sold out.  He believes it was nothing but the grace of God.

Society and cultural norms have taught us to language the obstacles we encounter in life as setbacks, roadblocks, failures, losses, even upsets.  But these seemingly incongruous and invidious experiences are opportunities from which progress will come.

Our perspective matters in how we respond to the convoluted circumstances – whether you see them as adjustments: wait – not now – later, detours, even complete reversal in direction.  They come to serve your alignment with purpose for who you are to become.  And that’s a baffling brute to accept and integrate into your inner sanctum.  We are only ever reminded of the certainty of the unpredictability of life’s ups and downs.  It is wise to just flow with the tide that sees you always moving forward.

Letitia Wright while she was filming the movie Black Panther, suffered a fractured shoulder and concussion.  She went home for three months and had to figure out how to bounce back to fulfill God’s purpose for her life.  She returned to the set and finished stronger.

Appreciating the words of Md. Ziaul Hague, “Be like water, Flow like a river, Crash like the rain, Fly like the cloud again!”  Show up, accept the set-up; be the river of flow.  Destiny is not linear; it is unapologetically inconvenient.  Things are unbefitting and unaccommodating your needs, time, and desires.  The twists and turns, the rope swinging to get to the other side of the creek, the wall scaling to get over, the rock climbing to get up a cliff are all a part of an intended end.  The complexity of the terrain is confounding!   Sadly, many never get there.

Acknowledge the pain and trauma.  Process them.  Forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made along the way.  You can think greater than how you feel, even, when others meant to harm you.  You are not singled out; all are going through the same process, a process leading to gold.  Suffering is a part of the human experience.  However, many do not see its eternal glimmer through the cloud of suffering.

Give yourself the freedom and grace to be present in the process.  Change is guaranteed when you keep showing up for yourself.  You don’t have to feel strong to be strong.  You just got to show up!

Every time you keep moving you are building momentum and exercising resilient and enduring muscles you never thought you had in your mind, body, emotions, and spirit.

What can you stir up within that will support you in this process?

What can you do in the process to generate energy and forward movement?

Do it.

The kind of change you hope for is the one that sees you always moving forward in the flow of life, carrying the seeds of your greatness for the evident realization and manifestation of your highest self-expression and divine alignment with clarity and impact to fulfill your mission, purpose, and destiny.

Our expectations are what ache us in life.  Professor Jared Eagen explains, “We are only ever disappointed when our expectations do not become our reality.”  When we expect things to work out and they don’t.  Don’t try to make sense of it in the midst of it.  Adjust the sails and allow the wind to escort and carry you.  Be the river of flow.

What perspective would see you always moving forward?