Not all success is created equal. Nor are all the paths to take us there.
Before we begin our journey, all the roads to take us from our starting point to our final destination can seem the same.
Some pitfalls only emerge in practice.
Some drawbacks are only visible once we’ve stepped down from a place of ascended, hands-off clarity and immersed ourselves in the process of progression.
Flawless foresight is impossible. We’ll never know everything we could know before we start – and even if we couldn’t, we wouldn’t want to.
A full mind which “understands” exactly what’s happening is one that’s closed off to learning…
And if you’re not learning, you’re losing.
This may not be apparent right away.
It’s possible that the consequences of your closed mind will only reveal themselves over time. Less in what you experience: more in what you miss out on.
Because when you shut the door on potential new experiences, your future grows narrower and narrower, until all that’s left is a sliver of what could have been.
We know this.
We know that being inflexible in our approach is the cause of a whole host of issues. And that an inability to process the world as it is (rather than as we take it to be) is at the heart of so much challenge we encounter.
If we know that closing ourselves off to reality – acknowledging that our understanding will grow over time & we might need to change tack in order to capitalise on our experience – why do we continually allow ourselves to get stuck on a one-track, fast-track to failure?
Simple:
Our desire for certainty is our undoing.
Commitment creates coherence.
The decided mind doesn’t deliberate. It already knows.
Navigating the challenges life sends our way is easier when we’re able to explain why things happen the way they do.
It’s a cognitive self-preservation mechanism. Something we do to reduce our burdens… and alleviate the need to figure out what things mean. Because when we’ve already decided, we can move on from the “why” and focus on the other factors instead:
What to do next, how to respond, where you should go as a result.
The road is long.
We don’t know everything there is to know before we set out.
If our mind is irreversibly made up before we even begin, we shouldn’t be surprised when we’re confronted with countless closed doors along the way.
But if we can hold onto our willingness to learn – if we can realise that an open mind opens doors – we’ll have everything we need to overcome anything we encounter.