My Life Matters 2

Everybody is searching for significance, security and success. Everybody struggles with life and the things that keep them from achieving their goals. No one moves through life in a straight line from birth to the success they desire. No one!

Out there, just beyond the dark shadow of the unknown, lays the demons of the darkness, the monsters in the pit and the enemies of the soul. They lay in wait for the first opportunity to dismantle us, limb from limb. They are enemies to out future, to our potential and to life as we want it to be. But few of us understand the hidden reality of our enemies. We tend to define them by our interaction with the people and personalities that surround us. But human nature drives us to define those enemies in inordinate ways, leaving us with illusions of evil and barriers to success that in fact, do not exist.

We tend to see the boss, the neighbor or the disloyal friend as the enemy, when in fact the greatest enemy may be our definition and preoccupation with that which we blame. Thus, the enemy is inside of us, rather than out there, lurking in the dark.

The ground of shame is blame. When I blame someone else for my plight, real or imagined, I create shame for myself by the excusing of responsibility. Blame and shame are inexorably linked together.

When I accept a barrier to my goals, I accept failure, rather than taking the alternative possibility that I have only experiences one way that will not get me where I am going.

Thomas Edison said, after many experiments, “I never once failed at making a light bulb. I just found out 99 ways not to make one.”