The Only Obstacle

The pupil raised another question to his teacher, “What are obstacles that lay in our way to success?” The teacher had a wise smile and took the class to school terrace. He asked the pupil to climb the fences and look down. The pupil was dead scared, “I will fall and die,” he said. “You won’t. Now climb” But the pupil did not move. After repeated persuasion, he mustered up some courage, climbed for a fleeting moment and jumped back to the terrace floor.

“You see,” said the teacher “you and your fears are your only obstacles. Once, you overcome them by having faith in you, you will be unstoppable”

When you are afraid to do something, you tend to find myriad excuses so that you do not have to perform – you call them obstacles. Even a small reason will work as good as a big one if you are afraid and wish to avoid it. At that time, you will not find solutions but problems & hurdles and you will have more of both. If you waste your energy in constructing backup plans before starting your journey, you will end up living your life in your backups. It is good to be prudent but your prudence must not interfere with your goals.

Who and what can stop you? Nobody and nothing but you yourselves!

You are afraid to take the plunge – a leap of faith. But then, what is not risky – being born as a helpless and completely dependent infant is risky! Sharing the air, you breathe in with a large population is risky! Driving is risky and so is eating the food produced by an unknown farmer! Life is in itself a risk – a gamble, a coincidence! Despite this, you live and keep your faith.

To achieve something, to succeed, you must trust your abilities like an infant trusts his mother. Failure must not be an option – you may lose some levels but the game must end with your triumph. You are unstoppable only your will to achieve has to overcome your fear of failure. There is no mundane obstacle as great as the one that lie within – an inertia that prevents you from leaving your comfort zone, to take risk and to kick start the journey.

You may lose once, twice or thrice but each one of us is a born winner. Hence, victory is your property and the ultimate claim on it will be yours if and only if you remove the only obstacle...