Keep Moving Forward

I am like most people in the world. I have hopes and dreams. I am excited about the future and the amazing things I will accomplish with my goals. I have plans on how I want to fulfill my dreams. Every now and then a funny thing happens along the way to pursuing my dreams. I’ll be rolling along with my plans and then out of nowhere, I get overwhelmed and can’t move. Why do I do this to myself? Have you ever found yourself in a place of being stuck? By stuck, I mean feeling paralyzed like you can’t move forward.

When things are not going the way I think they should. It is so easy to get stuck in my “stuff”. Stuck in that feeling of not knowing what’s next. Could it be that I am scared to move forward? What is it? I find myself in this position when I don’t know what’s around the next corner. When I am afraid to do anything because I don’t want make the wrong move. I don’t want to add another layer to my existing challenges. Is being stuck a bad thing? I used to think so. When I hear the word stuck, I hear, not able to move, confused and doubtful. I hear procrastination yelling in my ear. I hear, “You should be doing something”, “You should want more out of life”, and “Why are you so lazy?”

I spoke with my Spiritual Advisor about this self-limiting behavior. She shared with me an interesting concept about my self-doubt, feelings of inadequacies, and not being enough. She shared that when we are moving ahead with our dreams, and everything is going along as expected, we can self-sabotage our plans with fear. Fear and limited thinking are the major culprits in cahoots with procrastination. When we get close to accomplishing something major in life, all the underlying feelings seem to pop up. If you don’t recognize the need to process and work through the issues that are presenting themselves, you may get knocked off your path. If you are knocked off the path, depending on your spiritual foundation, directly impacts your ability to move forward or stay stuck where you are.

Threre is a story that Napoleon Hill quotes in his book Think and Grow Rich. The name of the story is Three Feet From Gold. Here is the gist of the story: A gold prospector invested a lot of money to purchase gold mining equipment. He borrowed money from family and friends to fund his venture. He purchased a claim on a mine and went to work with pick and shovel in hand. He found a vein of gold and immediately went to work on mining for his fortune. He worked for many weeks to no avail. His dreams of gold faded away. He decided to quit. He sold his equipment, maps, and his hopes to a junkman for pennies on the dollar. The junkman decided to consult an engineer about the location of the vine of gold on the map after he purchased the equipment. The engineer told him that there was a fault line that shifted the vein by over three feet. There was only a three feet difference in where the previous prospector stopped drilling. The junkman was wiser, he decided to seek counsel before he started mining for gold. The junk man made millions on the deal.

I was so inspired by this story. We all meet with temporary defeat and perhaps failure. When the perception of failure makes you feel stuck, the easiest thing to do is quit. That is what most of us do. Failure can outwit you and blind your hope causing you to give up. This is where faith comes in and supplies you with all you need to make it. Take a moment and reflect on your dreams and aspirations. Don’t let failure stop you from reaching your goal. Don’t stop three feet from your gold. Keep moving forward.