Obstacles in Your Path

In ancient times, a king had a boulder placed on a roadway. Then he hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock. Some of the king's wealthiest merchants and courtiers came by and simply walked around it. Many loudly blamed the king for not keeping the roads clear, but none did anything about getting the stone out of the way.


Then a peasant came along carrying a load of vegetables. Upon approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his goods and tried to move the stone to the side of the road. After much pushing and straining, he finally succeeded.

After the peasant picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been. The purse contained many gold coins and a note from the king indicating that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the roadway. The peasant learned what many of us never understand:

Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition.

In today's business world, these are a few of the current obstacles:

- higher demands for bottom line results
- fewer resources
- diminished budgets
- changing makeup of teams

Obstacles seem to block progress at nearly every turn. How do we respond? Often we stare at the "boulder" in our path and feel defeated and discouraged. We often make excuses why we are not succeeding.

We typically cannot change the presence of the obstacles so why not change our thinking? View obstacles as opportunities to improve our condition, perhaps by rising up as the recognized expert who is remaining on the job or by taking the lead to impact your team to be an effective, high performing team.

Don't stay "stuck" waiting on the boulder to move out of the way or waiting for "better times ahead." Instead let's work together to get rid of the negative influence of the obstacle and work over it, under it, or around it to get to those bottom line results we all want.

Seize the opportunity and lead the way to becoming totally "unstuck!"

What are your big obtacles that are getting in the way?