To a great extent,
One could argue that the entirety of the life we experience,
can be traced back to the direct results of the decisions we have made.
We face uncertainties on a daily basis on various levels,
ranging in size and implication,
from if we should brush our teeth after that third cup of coffee,
to what procedure to perform to save a child's life.
Some of these decisions we make consciously,
And others are less consciously made.
And some of these decisions
stand to change the course of our entire lives,
though we aren't even aware we’re making them at the time.
One decision that each of us must face at some point,
is whether we will approach our lives with a fixed mindset,
or with a growth based mindset.
In a fixed universe,
both people and conditions simply are the way they are,
and there's nothing that you or I can do to change that.
Early in life,
with the help of those charged to be our educators,
we identify our strengths and weaknesses relative to the standard,
and in time learn to live well within those limits so as to avoid failure,
because failure is the opposite of success.
In this world of scarcity,
the rich get richer,
the poor get poorer,
the big guy picks on the little guy,
so it always has been, so it always will be.
In a growth based universe however,
all that lies before us is rooted in endless possibility.
We don’t study, to pass tests,
to appropriately temper our expectations for the future;
we nurture the habit of seeking knowledge and gaining insight
into those subjects we find we have an affinity for and an interest in.
We don’t seek out our comfort zone,
but flee from it and toward failure,
as failure is not the opposite of success,
but a part of it.
In this abundant world
a man is never limited by his start,
as he knows full well that everything he could ever want or want to be lies just on the other side of the
information required and the courage necessary to achieve it.
Almost as soon as
if not before we enter our educational system,
we of the Western world are taught and nurture a very
fixed, linear, destination based life ideology.
Study to past tests to make good grades to get into the best college we can.
Finance that college education by any means necessary.
Graduate and get the highest paying job we can.
Get married,
buy the biggest house we can get a loan for,
have kids,
color inside the lines,
keep up with Joneses,
we’ll be safe, we’ll be secure,
we’ll be happy.
And while this certainly paints a pretty enough picture,
the rub comes when we compare this philosophy to what we see present in the rest of this universe that
we experience.
When we look to the nature of the abundance found in the world around us,
we find it not to be the fixed product of a linear narrative,
featuring unwavering progress from birth until arriving at some everlasting success.
No, instead we find it to be born of an upward trending cycle of death and reformation.
For no matter how bountiful a harvest may be,
the dead of winter is always soon to come,
and just as sure as the spring and summer too follow,
so does life tend to grow back stronger than ever before.
Once more we see this trend paralleled in our greatest instances of material abundance,
where success and wealth are rarely the biproduct of religious adherence to the status quo,
and more often represent the manifestation of the vision of some great man or woman,
pursued relentlessly to the criticisms of their family, peers, industry, and society,
through failures, frustrations, set backs, and side steps,
all to see through that which no one else believed possible:
the perfect intersection of their talent, their passion, their experience,
and their ability to bring value to the market place.
The author Carlos Castaneda once wrote that,
“The difference between the true warrior and the common man,
is that the true warrior sees everything in life as a challenge,
the common man sees everything in life as a blessing or a curse.”
Once more,
professor Leon Megginson paraphrased the famed biologist Charles Darwin by saying,
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives,
nor is it the most intelligent,
but it he who is most adaptive to change.”
Humans are constantly evolving beings,
and we exist in an ever expanding universe.
Your fulfillment does not await you in the comfort zone,
for your mind, your body, yea, your very soul find their peace only within their own growth, evolution,
and expansion,
as it such that most align them with the universe in which they exist.
As attractive of a story line as it is,
the narrative of the one fixed road to happily ever after,
there has never existed a path destined to be traversed by each of us,
and peace and lasting joy were never meant to be a destination that we can simply arrive at,
for our beginnings and the directions they take us in are as unique as they are many,
and as the ancient saying goes,
the journey is the reward.