A fork in the road

A fork in the road   Audioversion

 I’m considering a few of those much used phrases all of which allude to the same thought to see just what they are telling us. I’ve been surprised at just how old the original thought is. The one’s I’m thinking about are “what doesn’t kill you makes you strong” and “you cant make omelettes without breaking eggs” In fact the idea that leads to these comes from the Greek empire and its philosophers who had the belief that there was good strife and bad strife.

Good strife is when events happen that lead to a good outcome, for example where artists compete to create a prize winning painting or inventors compete to develop a new product or process.

Bad strife is the mirror image of this it is where conflict crushes ambition for example the contestant that loses at the final of a competition goes home and never performs again.

There is though  something more that we need to consider around this, and if we continue to follow the thought about the contestant  think about how many times, on some of the t.v. shows, contestants from previous years have come back for a second go.

What makes the difference between pack up and forget the idea or fight on and prove your point?

The fork in the road:  every one of us encounters those situations where what we planned or tried to do went wrong and we had to continue in some fashion

For some it is a case of learn from your mistakes, refine and reshape, use it as part of the development process while for others their confidence disappears, they accept the criticism and feel worthless and do not have the energy or even, in their mind, the right to disagree.

There are those who in the early years have some catastrophic event overwhelm them, things so devastating that life will never be the same for them again. They have to make a decision at some point, to give up and be the victim, “ That poor soul” constantly cared for and under the control of others or to make the best of things, see what they can do, challenge everyone else’s limited expectations of them and get the life they want. What is it that makes people take one or the other fork in the road, do we think that some people are optimists and some are pessimists permanently and unchangeably? Do we think there must have been an inspiring role model for some and none for others.

Consider this: We all believe things about ourselves, positive and negative. Believes generate feelings, for the positive things we have good, supportive, ambitious feelings and for the negative we have destructive, self limiting feelings. Feelings in turn produce actions, always actions---- not inactions –Maybe you were jumping ahead to that thought !  The good actions push us on to greater success, to do more of whatever, to find variations and additional good things to make things / life better and better. The bad feelings produce actions too, they make us doubt ourselves so that we don’t try anything new or different because we believe that there will be no success only more failure so, Carry on and Stick with the least bad” becomes the attitude. Sometimes people carry on doing something and keep failing thinking that one day the result will be different—it won’t , If it doesn’t work don’t do it, do something else

So the point is choice

 Choose the route to success, start off knowing what you want, work out how to get it  and think how you will recognise when you have reached your goal---what will it look, feel, taste, sound, smell, look like? then get on with it.

If you can’t see the way to go, if you lack the motivation, if you lack the confidence come and talk to me I will help you.

© Martin Williams 2013/15/16